Google News: It's al-Qaedariffic!

Months ago Google News made the announcement that it planned to upgrade its news service to “rank news stories by the quality and credibility of the source.” San Francisco-based Google might want to hold off on those new patents for a while though, unless they really do consider State Department-confirmed pro-terrorist web sites as quality, credible sources.

Google News proudly features this “news” article from jihadunspun.com, a known pro-terrorist propaganda site:

From Jihad Unspun:

US forces shot and killed a nine-year old Iraqi girl as she came out of her school following final exams in Baghdad. A medical specialist in Baghdad's al-Yarmuk General Hospital told the correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam that an American sniper opened fire on ‘A'ishah Ahmad ‘Umar, killing her.

For its part, the US military occupation forces announced that they had begun an investigation of the Marine who shot the little girl and promised to punish him if he is found guilty.

A source in the Iraqi puppet army told Mafkarat al-Islam that the American soldier was very drunk at the time of the killing and that he was withdrawn from his observation post after the incident.

The father of ‘A'ishah, who works for the Railroad Department said that residents in the area where his little daughter was killed told him that the American had been betting with his buddies whether he could hit the little girl who had come out of the school some 700 meters from the US observation post.

For its part, the American propaganda TV station called “al-‘Iraqiyah” blamed what it called “terrorists” for the shooting of the little girl, but subsequent statements by the US military and the Iraqi puppet forces exposed the “al-‘Iraqiyah” story to be a lie.

Where to begin? The Newsweek-quality anonymous sources? Or the fact that there are no Marines in Baghdad (they are deployed to the west)? Or the fact that U.S. forces in Iraq do not have ready access to alcohol?

No, instead we start with the fact that Google News was the focus of an article by honestreporting.com on this same pro-terror site back in January. Six months afterward, Google still features the pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic web site as a valued news contributor.

One could presumably ignore honestreporting.com, but Google News also ignored the April 8, 2005 State Department warning of Jihad Unspun's suspected al-Qaeda support:

A trio of obscure Web sites and individuals has combined to spread deliberate disinformation, particularly about U.S. actions in Iraq. The entities involved are Islam Memo (Islammemo.cc), Muhammad Abu Nasr, and Jihad Unspun (jihadunspun.net).
Most of the disinformation appears to originate with Islam Memo, which is a pro-al Qaeda, pro-Iraqi insurgency, Arabic-language Web site based in Saudi Arabia.
Muhammad Abu Nasr, co-editor of the Free Arab Voice Web site (freearabvoice.org), translates material from Islam Memo into English and posts it as "Iraqi Resistance Reports" on his Web site.
Jihad Unspun publishes selected articles by Muhammad Abu Nasr, giving them a broader audience.

There are many sites of questionable veracity to draw news articles from, but in light of the well-documented pro-terrorist background of Jihad Unspun, one might start to question the motives of those at Google News that still consider Jihad Unspun a valid news source.

Note: Hat tip to Rusty Shackleford, himself a former Google News contributor, who alerted me to this story.

Update: Instalanched before I could even fix the spelling of "al-Qaedariffic." Thanks again, Glenn. More spelling errors are available free of charge to my valued guests on the main page.