I sent a message to Google News on September the 18th, after reading a dKos post stating that on searching Google News for dKos info, the responses ALL listed dKos as:
Daily Kos (Satire)
Sure enough, I went and checked for myself (because although they make call Missouri the "show me" state, I too like to see for myself, rather than just buying into a meme), and lo and behold, here's what I found.... more in the extended section...
Here is the body of my letter to Google News:
Original Message Follows:
------------------------
From: my real name <my real email>
Subject: Google News
Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 09:47:29 -0700
Dear Google News,
I'm wondering why in the world, when I do a search on the Google News
page for 'Daily Kos', the results ALL list in this format:
How can this be? <http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/18/102616/125>
Daily Kos (satire), United States - 2 hours ago
... I respect the Kos diary community very much and want to do the
right thing ... have 15,000 words to elucidate this failure here, but
reading The Daily Howler every ...
The Kossack Hordes <http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/18/102656/680>
Daily Kos (satire), United States - 2 hours ago
... Kos gets upwards of 200,000 hits daily (or is it hourly?) If
half of the Kossacks hit 80 families, that's 80 million families. That's
...
More tough things for Kerry to say
<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/18/112955/627>
Daily Kos (satire), United States - 1 hour ago
Attacking Bush as out of touch is just right. So was the Kos-inspired
riff on "you own it." Can we come up with more zingers for him? Here's
my two entries. ...
BUSH/GOP PISSES ON 9/11
<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/18/11392/1420>
Daily Kos (satire), United States - 1 hour ago
By JESSE J. HOLLAND, AP. WASHINGTON (Sept. 17) - House Republicans plan
to follow President Bush's lead and reject the Sept. 11 commission's ...
As you can see, you are listing a serious, political, online community
as SATIRE.
Could you please correct this?
If there is a political online site that should be labeled as 'Satire',
that would be 'Opinons You Should Have' (located at
http://tomburka.com ).
Both of these online websites are definitely progressively leaning, but
that alone does not make them satirical. Satire requires a comedy
component, and although some of the diaries on DailyKos may be funny,
the site is indeed serious. For a news oriented search engine, I
expect you to properly label your results.
I eagerly await your response.
Thank you,
(Name, Address and phone number were listed here in my letter)
Now, here is the response I found in my inbox tonight when I got home from work:
Hi Angela,
Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention. We apologize for
our delayed response. We have updated this site in our system. The
correction should now be displaying in Google News.
Regards,
The Google Team
Just over ten days, and the world's biggest search engine got my letter, and changed their site responses to remove the (Satire) tag.
I applaud them.
Did anyone else here on the dKos write them, or was it just me????