Would anyone dispute that, for the majority of online publishers, being found on Google is a matter of life or death?

There’s a scary story in the first edition of the new Fast Company Daily today about one niche publisher’s experience in being – at least temporarily – delisted from Google’s search engine and the AdSense program, and effectively barred from buying Google AdWords. My first reaction was that it couldn’t be true. (Okay, to be blunt, “WTF?”) I guess this wouldn’t affect me so viscerally if the alleged offender, Studio Briefing, hadn’t been “one of us” (the media on media), but I have to say I found the item worth a rant.

Imagine a world where you could have your commercials pulled and your site blocked from Google search, with little or no appeal, on the basis of unclear and un-appealable infringements? I’ll refer you to the Fast Company brief on the story for details, and state clearly for the record that a) I’m gratified that SB’s listing was summarily restored and, b) I have no first-hand knowledge of the case. But SB’s experience is at the very least a cautionary tale. What I didn’t know, and find markedly anathema, is the existence of an undisclosed Google Black List for news sites.

I'll begin with a word in Google's defense. Everyone with a brain online has terms and conditions for participation in their commercial programs, and abusers of an advertising system that’s based on trust is reasonable. (No link farming, for example.) But the implication here is that no such infringement occurred; the landing page was just deemed to have fallen short of some unstated standard. Blocking the site from being found on the basis of its content is the bridge too far.

It takes me back to an incident in the mid-1990s when Microsoft was issuing it’s first Internet Explorer edition with parental controls. Seems it arbitrarily decided to block access to the Wall Street Journal because of a famous “column four” story about penile implants. Microsoft enlisted the assistance of then WSJ.com editor Neil Budde (a great person and colleague) to try to put together a group of journalists and news organizations to define what constitutes a news site. Microsoft’s “feature” had in effect created the need to write a patch with a news exemption.

Sound reasonable? No_fricking_way. I was electronic media director at the Newspaper Association of America at the time and was never prouder of NAA’s response. We the media do not, under any circumstances, define news. News is what the creator says it is, and the view of a First Amendment Absolutist as applied to the IE incident might be paraphrased as: “Microsoft shall make no code … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press….”

Of course, Microsoft isn’t Congress and neither is Google. Google has its OWN right to exercise its freedom of speech, and decline to PUBLISH anything it wants in its search engine return results. I would defend to the death Google’s right to delist whomever it chooses. But, when an entity even approaching Google’s power has the ability to censor or discriminate among content providers as it appears to have done in this case, how is it different than a broadcaster that the FCC might regulate on the basis of market dominance? Should equal access rules regarding political speech apply to the Internet? (Let the implicaitons of that one sink in for a moment.)

This week the Federal Trade Commission held a two-day hearing on the future of journalism and how independent reporting can be supported. ("From Town Crier to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?") One of the better wrap ups on the event with links to coverage is here.

Clearly, regardless of what Rupert Murdoch thinks, the survival of many independent voices who are within their Constitutional rights to describe themselves as news, and who have a demonstrable audience that wants to be served, are dependent on Google for their very livelihoods. Google is the new “airwaves.” As such, I have to ask, does it have a moral, if not legal, obligation to be impartial in its listings? The truth is, no.

But under FTC rules regarding truth in advertising, I would make the case that if it does discriminate, it needs to rewrite its “Ten Things” and provide full disclosure on what it chooses to censor. Given the moral high ground Google likes to take in contrast to, say, Bing, whose results it alleges could be bought by the likes of Murdoch, I’d love to be a fly on the wall in that re-write.

There’s another FTC Workshop coming up Monday on privacy we should all be watching closely. I’ll be there, and will be particularly interested to see whether there’s any recognition of the contributions from this week's panelists. Notably, Mark Contreras, SVP of E.W. Scripps Co. said the number one thing that would help the newspaper industry survive in future is: “Support for the evolution of behaviorally-targeted advertising.”

As these historic talks unfold in the incomparably digital-savvy Obama Administration, I expect our industry’s platform to remain immovable: that permission and disclosure reign supreme in governing user privacy.  

But I also think disclosure cuts both ways and expect regulators to insist on it. I hope Google takes that to heart the next time it picks on one of “our own.”