To: Sully- who wrote (14248 ) 12/2/2004 2:10:44 AM From: cosmicforce Read Replies (4) | Respond to of 20773 I'm not sure this means anything, this analysis of yours. One small sample of some raw numbers ar turned into a media bias and this is not really supported by any analysis. Below, a different analysis is provided which is much more comprehensive and seems to suggest a real bias, but I'm not sure it's the bias you expect. Actually, when I embarked upon this, I had no idea what I'd find. It was done as an honest intellectual exercise. I used three search engines to do it (Yahoo, AV and Google). This quick and dirty analysis is similar in structure to the type done all the time to catch people who plagiarize, or simply to try to attribute historical works to one author or another. In Part I, Google, with the smaller number of raw web pages disagrees with the results of the other two engines considerably in the ratio of stories (there is more importantly a bias in spelling, which I will discuss further in Part II). What can one infer from Part I Data? We have to admit that of these 3, 2 agree (AV and Yahoo) and one doesn't (Google). This makes Google suspect as a search engine. In Part II where I look at just the News searches, Google has the highest number of news links and is very similar to Yahoo. Perhaps this is Google and Yahoo's real forte or they just don't remove duplicates. For whatever reason, they have a more comprehensive news search than AV. This is probably budget related since news services charge. It is clear that all news searches (written by a smaller community of people than web pages) are biased toward one spelling of Falluja (with an "h") in a way that is not apparent in web pages in general (see Part I Data). Web pages can be reasonably expected to have more distinct authors than news outlets. What is really fascinating is that stories about reconstruction are inordinately predisposed to the use of the letter "h" in the city name Falluja(h) which would suggest single authorship or authorship by a cohesive group which standardizes on a single spelling. This bias is particularly noticeable with Google and Yahoo, which also have the better news search capability. We should ask ourselves "Why do people who write news stories about reconstruction in Falluja(h) tend to use one spelling?" I can only think of one very good reason - namely, that this type of news comes from a narrow set of sources, possibly one (that being the occupying forces). There seems to be in this data a good statistical case for propagandizing about reconstruction in Falluja and better still, this is independently verifiable by all people of good faith. Further, there appears to be a strong likelihood that Google will return stories that are from a narrower set of origins. That, to me, seems much more tangible, compelling and measurable than a purported (and highly subjective and personal) statement of a particular news outlet being "liberally-biased" based upon a ranking in Google's engine alone. If there is bias, it is in all the Falluja(h) news, and specifically about Falluja(h)'s Reconstruction. Let the data speak!Data Part I Google: Fallujah ruins vs Falluja ruins 46,800 vs. 37,800 ( "h" vs. no "h" ) Yahoo: Fallujah ruins vs Falluja ruins 57,200 vs. 68,100 ( "h" vs. no "h" ) AV:Fallujah ruins vs Falluja ruins 57,100 vs. 70,300 ( "h" vs. no "h" )Data Part II Google News: Fallujah ruins vs Falluja ruins 803 vs. 62 ( "h" vs. no "h" ) Google News: Fallujah reconstruction vs Falluja reconstruction 3,810 vs. 216( "h" vs. no "h" ) Yahoo News: Fallujah ruins vs Falluja ruins 585 vs. 140 ( "h" vs. no "h" ) Yahoo News: Fallujah reconstruction vs Falluja reconstruction 2,718 vs. 179 ( "h" vs. no "h" ) AV News:Fallujah ruins vs Falluja ruins 76 vs. 27 ( "h" vs. no "h" ) AV News:Fallujah reconstruction vs Falluja reconstruction 312 vs. 24 ( "h" vs. no "h" )