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Israeli Troops Invade Gaza
Last week, I posted my thoughts about
the clash between Hamas and Egypt.
I even added a link to an article in Yahoo News. After the post was
on air, I went on exploring Yahoo News and I noticed something interesting:
When I clicked the picture on the article, the one with the man throwing stones, I got to a presentation of images. The title of the
presentation was "Israeli Troops Invade Gaza". The caption of the picture started with "A Palestinian supporter of Hamas throws stones at
Egyptian border police…" and had no mention of Israeli troops. The other pictures in the presentation also had captions talking about the
clash between Hamas and Egypt, with no mention of Israel. You can view the presentation
here.
I have sent a message through the site to Yahoo News Customer Care. I was replied with the following email:
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Hello David,
Thank you for writing to Yahoo! News. I understand your concern regarding an article "Israeli troops invade Gaza" published on Yahoo! News. I
apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.
Please note that Yahoo! News does not write or edit the news on our site, nor do we post or edit corresponding photos. If you have comments
about the accuracy, tone, angle, or coverage of a story or photo, we ask that you contact the news provider directly who will be able to
address the specific issue.
Yahoo! strives to provide complete and balanced coverage of all news events, thus, our sources for Yahoo! News vary by subject. Reuters,
the Associated Press, and AFP provide news in almost all categories on our site and represent the majority of our daily story volume.
However, we also have many other providers. To identify the provider of a story, look at the upper-right side of the news page where you
read the story. You'll see a graphic identifying the provider.
Following are the contact email addresses for our major news providers:
For a comprehensive list and contact information for all other Yahoo! News providers, go to:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/news/navigating/beta-08.html
We appreciate you contacting us-your input helps us to identify ways to constantly maintain and improve our services to provide our users with
the best experience possible with Yahoo!. If you have additional questions regarding this matter, please reply to this message and we will
gladly assist you.
Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! News.
Regards,
Gabriel
Yahoo! News Customer Care
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I was somewhat surprised from this answer. First of all, I wasn't talking at all about whether the coverage of the news was complete and
balanced. Second, how come Yahoo News doesn't review the contents of the articles it gets from its providers? Even if Yahoo News staff do only
web design work, and publish the articles as is, don't they have any responsibility on the contents that are eventually on their website?
Looking again at the presentation of pictures, I noticed another thing: Each picture came from a different news provider. Still, they all had
the title – capture issue. Is the origin of the problem a specific provider? I don't think so.
In another email I've got from Gabriel, after I tried to clarify the issue, he repeated the "complete and balanced news coverage" subject. Did
he miss the point again? What encouraged me in the last email was that he also wrote: "I appreciate the feedback and will forward it to the
production team".
I have also wrote about this issue in Yahoo News Suggestion Board.
Click here to see it.
The "suggestion" has got three "votes" and one comment, written by some guy named Eric, and I quote:
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I've noticed this same phenomenon (clip does not match news story) about 20 times now. Very annoying since I don't discover the
error until after the forced advertisement.
I've also noticed that with the picture carousel, a hundred pictures may listed but the user can only see about 20.
Please fix or at least provide an announcement to your customer base.
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Thanks, Eric, for the revelation.
I don't know what happened since in the Yahoo News team, and if my messages came through, but I know that the presentation hasn't changed yet,
now that I'm writing these lines. If there is a conclusion to this case, I believe that it is that when reading an article, one should read
the whole thing, and not just the title, as many people I know do.
January 17th, 2010.
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