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July 2, 2004 7:59 PM

Not to touch on politics, but I found this particularly striking example of how Google News can reveal a dimension of 'news' that can be difficult to observe.
posted by sudama (21 comments total)

That is pretty neat, and it's a good point, but there was in fact a Washington Post story in your results that summarizes everything pretty well.

Army to Recall 5,000 Veterans

I don't think has been exactly underpublicized, but then I get most of my news from the blogosphere, so my view could be distorted.
posted by lbergstr at 8:05 PM on July 2, 2004

[confused]

I love the second link, but since the search box in the google news link comes up empty, I don't know what it's showing. Is it all the page one stories? That's way cool if it is. I love how Kansas has "69 kansas people to go" and the bigger papers have the bigger picture.

It's like that night the Dundee Courier's splash was "Dundee man lost as ship sinks"

The boat? Titanic.
posted by bonaldi at 8:09 PM on July 2, 2004

Here's a targeted example of "Not in the news" :

Woolsey to head Ministry of Information in Iraq?
posted by troutfishing at 8:51 PM on July 2, 2004

I really enjoy reading articles on the same subject by Reuters and the AP. The AP is much more nationalistic and conservative, while the British Reuters doesn't have to be.
posted by skallas at 8:57 PM on July 2, 2004

This is a great post, sudama. How quickly will the link rot?
posted by trharlan at 9:33 PM on July 2, 2004

I note you cited Arab News, trout, instead of the column in The Nation, which in turn cited the Washington Post (no link found.) Any particular reason? Did you just like the contention that the 11 September hijackings could have been prevented by turning the airliners upside-down, as Whalen suggested? ;-)
posted by quarantine at 9:49 PM on July 2, 2004

For those without time to read the article, the White House immediately nixed the Pentagon's idea of Woolsey as Minister.
posted by quarantine at 9:54 PM on July 2, 2004

Speaking of striking examples, someone finally tracked down the story
The Pet Goat, of Farenheit 9/11's famous seven minutes of President Bunny In The Headlights scene.

It's Lesson 60 on page 153 of Reading Mastery II-Rainbow Edition.

From the top:

The girl had a pet goat. She liked to go running with her pet goat. She played with her goat in her house. She played with her goat in her yard. But the goat did something that made the girl's dad mad. The goat ate things. He ate cans and he ate cakes. He ate cakes and he ate cats. One day her dad said, that goat must go. He ate too many things. The girl said, that if you let the goat stay with us, I will see that he stops eating all those things. Her dad said he will try it. So the goat stayed and the girl made him stop eating cans and cakes and cats and cakes. But one day a car robber went into the girls house. He saw a big red car in the house and said, I will steal that car. He ran to the car and started to open the door. The girl and the goat were playing in the back yard. They did not see the car robber...

I was wondering when that would be tracked down.
posted by y2karl at 10:35 PM on July 2, 2004

While the newseum link is fairly handy, I do not understand the point of your Google News link whatsoever.
posted by mischief at 5:01 AM on July 3, 2004

A look on NewsmapU.S.-Nation edition tag reveals the news of the 66 from Kansas in Ready Reserve now at 13:56 GMT.
posted by elpapacito at 5:57 AM on July 3, 2004

I think the point was that you can quickly see regional call-up numbers from all over the United States.
posted by srboisvert at 6:41 AM on July 3, 2004

"Did you just like the contention that the 11 September hijackings could have been prevented by turning the airliners upside-down, as Whalen suggested? ;-)
" - quarantine, I'm not really sure what you're talking about.

I was trying to make the point that Google News is a handy way to determine what stories and subjects mainstream news media is not covering.

Like : Jim Woolsey to head the new Ministry of Information in Iraq? WTF? Woolsey, the former director of the CIA who - back in 2003, probably '02 even - was loudly proclaiming the start of WW4 and advocating that the US reshape the map of the Middle East and then launch an all out assault on North Korea.....

WTF?

It's as if US foreign policy has been possessed by the spirit of "Dr. Strangelove".

Why did I link to "Arab News" and not to David Corn's piece on Woolsey? Well, I'll answer that question with another question - are those who advocated giving Woolsey the job (#1, he's not an Iraqi, #2......) utterly oblivious to how the appointment will be perceived by many in Iraq, in the Middle east, and the Islamic World at large? Or don't they care? Are they being, even, delibersately provocative? Sure, Corn reports that the White House opposed the appointment - which Corn says was pushed by the State Department. Whatever. I'd give more creedence to Jim Lobe on this one :

About fourteen months ago, Lobe made a very pointed prediction in the Asia Times : Watch Woolsey" :
"
Watch Woolsey
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - If you want to figure out whether the administration of President George W Bush intends a crusade to remake the Middle East in the wake of Washington's presumed military victory in Iraq, watch what happens with R James Woolsey. A former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Woolsey is being pushed hard by his fellow neoconservatives in the Pentagon to play a key role in the post-Saddam Hussein US occupation. "
posted by troutfishing at 6:47 AM on July 3, 2004

I think the point is that google gives us an ability to get a broad, localized view of national and international news stories that would go unseen in the past.

For example, we have all seen the story of how the military is calling up reserves from around the country. Using google, however, we can see local news stories that refer to the people affected individually and personally. In the past, this would have been impossible unless you went to a library with a broad selection of local newspapers, and then you would have had to scan every newspaper.
posted by PigAlien at 6:53 AM on July 3, 2004

PigAlien - I know. I was pointing out another interesting application of Google News.
posted by troutfishing at 7:17 AM on July 3, 2004

local news stories that refer to the people affected individually and personally

Oh, you mean "filler", those crap stories that drove me to getting rid of my TV.
posted by mischief at 8:18 AM on July 3, 2004

He ate cakes and he ate cats.

He ate cats?! That's one crazy goat! No wonder Bush couldn't leave; he was transfixed by that fascinating story.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:30 AM on July 3, 2004

troutfishing, what was your search on google news? I know there was one because it returns 341 hits, but my search box comes up blank
posted by bonaldi at 10:04 AM on July 3, 2004

Yeah, I snarked too soon, it was a cool post.
posted by lbergstr at 10:23 AM on July 3, 2004

bonaldi - I used "Woolsey, Iraq"

Woolsey pops up a fair amount in this search (80+ hits), but mention of his new appointment is scarce indeed. You'll find that those few explicit acknowledgementss which seem to exist are by foreign and US alternative media.

Woolsey's a Democrat, but he moves in neocon circles and has been quite a busy bee lately. He also sits on the board of JINSA :

"“Only one think tank puts the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship first - JINSA!”
"
posted by troutfishing at 10:45 AM on July 3, 2004

Oh yeah - he seems to be tight with Samuel "Clash of Civilizations" Huntington and most closely affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which - as a think tank - has far more "gravitas" than PNAC and, although some at the center ( such as Brzezinski ) have advocated neo-colonial projects in the region ( see "The Grand Chessboard" ) Brzezinski and probably many others consider the Iraq gambit to be badly botched.

The real question is : who's Woolsey's daddy? The neocons or the CSIS "realists" ? Woolsey, no doubt, will play multiple roles in Iraq - as a "fixer", certainly, but he may also work to stir up trouble with Iran, as a buildup to a new phase in the neocon plan to reshape the map of the Middle East.

Working closely with Woolsey, no doubt, will be John Negroponte, the new US ambassador to Iraq, who has a controversial history for his association with the Iran-Contra scandal and also for his tenure as Reagan-appointed US Ambassador to Honduras, in the early 1980's when that country became a staging ground for the US created and backed "Contras" fighting against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and a death squad was created - in previously peaceful Honduras - that killed hundreds of civilians. Negroponte, and his new working association with Woolsey, will be worth close attention in the coming months, I'd bet.
posted by troutfishing at 11:10 AM on July 3, 2004

The link has already rotted, unfortunately. :(
posted by SpecialK at 8:39 PM on July 3, 2004