A few days after the Boing Boing post about Google’s sexblog snafu, I was exchanging e-mail with Mark Glaser, who writes the PBS blog MEDIASHIFT. Mark also talked to Violet Blue, Matt Cutts, and Danny Sullivan, and the result is a very thoughtful piece about how the power wrapped up in Google’s search algorithyms can hurt the little guy.

The piece opens with a long quote from Chelsea Girl’s Love Letter to Google. It quotes both me and especially Violet quite a bit. It quote’s from my blog, and even refers readers to it. But the piece does not link to my blog. Nor does it link to Comstock Films. And though it mentions them, it does not link to Pretty Dumb Things or Tiny Nibbles either.

It does link to Search Engine Land, it links to Matt Cutts, and it links to Boing Boing.

Perhaps it’s just an oversight. I hope so, but ten years’ experience of trying to bring the best of what I have, as a filmmaker and as a human being, to the depiction of sex makes me doubt that’s the reason that the PBS article doesn’t link to Comstock Films.

We’ve had printers refuse to print our inserts and posters because they were “pornographic”. I had my words used without attribution, let alone a link. Hell, I’ve even had a government ban one of my films from an entire continent.

So when PBS runs a story that started with a post that I made on my blog, and then doesn’t even link to my blog, it doesn’t surprise me. Am I disappointed? Yes. But surprised? No.

Fortunately, our situation with Google seems stable. If anyone goes looking for us as a result of the PBS piece, they should be able to find us!

P.S. Should anyone care to contact PBS ombudsman Michael Getler, you can do so here. Tell ‘im Tony says “hi”.

P.S.S. I knew something wasn’t quite right. The editors at MEDIASHIFT had no problem linking to TinyNibbles.com in the January 4 Top 5 Stories post. What do you supposed happened between this week and last?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 at 8:03 pm and is filed under Blogging, Press & Publicity, erotophobia, pbs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.