Do Democratic Party supporters threaten freedom of speech?

POLITICAL COMMENTARY BY KAY B. DAY

For quite some time I’ve heard rumors among conservative and centrist bloggers that their content is pushed to the bottom of search engine results and in some cases about two years ago, conservative news sites were removed altogether from results listed on a major search engine news site. And of course, I’ve experienced moments myself, when referrals from a search engine decrease after I’ve written an Op-Ed criticizing our “leaders” in Congress or the current Democratic presidential ticket.  I’ve noted the top search results from a major engine on just about any subject almost always includes Wikipedia, where anyone can edit and a mistake may not be corrected immediately, and often, left-leaning sites are presented as news, with no notation as to their obvious and declared political slant. Wikileaks is almost always at the top of political search results, and it's my impression that's a site that not only leans left, but whose data cannot be completely validated by traditional means. Why would I want to read about Gov. Sarah Palin at a website like Wikileaks?

I’ve done my best to ‘optimize’ for the top search engine. I certainly have credibility in my profession and I think I have a fairly well-done site. But I am basically writing off the top search engine on the Web.

Here at The US Report, Yahoo is our top referrer. So I suggest if you’re looking for our content, use that search engine. That’s what I use almost exclusively now. I suggest that because the leading search engine is controlled by employees who have donated a lot of money to Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign.  Does the one connect with the other? I have no idea and frankly, don’t care either way, but when you have the world's largest search engine firmly in the camp of a candidate as far as donations go, I think it's a good idea to at least disclose that to consumers.

I spent some time this weekend looking up IP numbers. I normally don’t have time to do that, but this was a bye weekend for us, with no major commitments. I was curious to see who visits The US Report. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a law firm where a major Obama supporter works. Someone from the firm appears to read here every day. One attorney working for that firm pledged to raise a minimum of $200,000 for the senator. It’s a very large firm, so I can’t draw any conclusions, but of course I wonder am I on some informal “truth screeners” list?

Recently, conservative websites like Bill O’Reilly’s have been hacked, and subscriber names publicized. We all by now know Gov. Sarah Palin’s email was intruded upon, and the "hacker" admitted he found nothing there. There were congratulatory and inspirational messages as well as photos of her family. I wondered if there were grounds for a lawsuit regarding the images, from an intellectual property rights standpoint.

This morning on Fox News, an anchor announced someone had set up a fake Facebook page in her name, ascribing all sorts of shady group memberships and some colorful language to the pages. The Missouri governor recently announced (very angrily) some law enforcement in the state agreed to monitor negative ads about Sen. Barack Obama to be sure they were “truthful.”  To top it all off, Rep. Nancy Pelosi has expressed a desire for the Fairness Doctrine to return. That last would impact the Web in my opinion. How would ABC handle that? Or PBS? Would their news begin to be objective? Have they even thought about it?

There are many reasons I could never cast my vote for a member of the current Democratic Party, although I voted for Democratic candidates in the past. Freedom of Speech is the issue I am most passionate about because that is what keeps us free. Whether all these events are orchestrated in some sort of “Astroturf” political assault is something I don’t know. What I do know: if all these things happened to Democrats, the press would be up in arms. And the Netroots as well.

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Update on Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 9:08PM by Kay B. Day, Editor

Media is silent as freedom of speech is further curtailed. Read the blog (first link) and then watch the video (2nd link): 

http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=13343

http://www.redstate.com/diaries/redstate/2008/sep/30/how-do-you-know-that-the-burning-down-the-hou/