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by EGreg 3219 days ago
"Do you think it's ethical for a company funding a news agency to influence what they publish?"

Every news agency's owners and advertisers influence what they publish. The argument from ethics is an interesting one. I know many advertisers who pull their funding from a show whose host said something controversial. They make the network fire the host and cancel a show etc.
2 comments
hwillis 3219 days ago
Just because something is controversial doesn't mean it's journalistically valuable. For instance if a host does something that the company considers unethical (eg a controversial statement that may or may not be true but is definitely damaging), they have an ethical responsibility to pull their business, even if it's actually against their own self interest. If you instead consider truth to be more important, then companies are also justified in pulling their business if they think the controversial statement is obviously false.

The unethical part of what google is doing is that there is very little chance they are not acting entirely in their own self-interest. There is an entire additional stratum of arguments underneath that which are about the real truth, freedom of speech, and whether it is okay to block what people think based on your opinions.

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EGreg 3218 days ago
"May or may not be true, but definitely damaging" sounds like what these guys were publishing.

Lots of opinions are damaging to someone or someone's agenda if taken seriously by enough people.

Do you really think these other corporate sponsors don't think about what's good for them and their image when they pull funding? You have to compare apples to apples. Google should be compared to other corporate sponsors of projects.

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musage 3219 days ago
> Every news agency's owners and advertisers influence what they publish.

That answers whether they think it's ethical. However, they weren't asked.

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