Google Seeks Patent on MSM Bias

In light of previous as well as more recent news about bias at Google, this latest is predictable but depressing:

Web search leader Google Inc. has applied for U.S. and international patents on technology to rank stories on its news site based on the quality of the news source... As Web logs and other commentary sites proliferate, postings from some have received prominent play within search result pages and on online news-gathering sites. Sometimes, such postings have carried biased or inaccurate claims. [Emphasis added.]

Of course stories from major news sources are neither biased nor inaccurate. No. Not at all. Of course not. They're clean as the driven snow.

The technology Google is attempting to patent may help the company choose the most reliable information sources... According to that patent application, factors determining such rankings would include: the amount of important coverage produced by an identified news source; a human opinion of that source; network traffic to the source; circulation statistics; staff size; breadth of coverage; and the number of bureaus the news source operates. [Emphasis added.]

In other words, all the things that a blog is not, plus several subjective factors engineered to calcify the MSM status quo. Can it get any more blatant? As Michelle Malkin notes, traditional newspapers are still way ahead. Google's patent could help to keep them that way. Call it Dan Rather's revenge.

UPDATE: Outside the Beltway seems to have been first to the story with links to several other articles, including the actual patent application. I searched last night but couldn't find it on the difficult-to-use U.S. Patent and Trademark site. Haven't patents for dozens of better search interfaces gone through their offices? Couldn't they just pick one?