It seems like Google and others have been cherry picking their "news" headlines for years but it has become abundantly evident in their current level of stridency and vituperation.  They cull their attack pieces from the most biased sources they can find and pass it off as news.  It is all under program control, just as they cherry pick ads that are selective for your interests. Brett raises the specter of programs choosing programmed journalism, all designed to shape public opinion to conform with the biases of the programmers.

Journalists can and should have opinions but opinion pieces should labeled as such in order to give the reader the opportunity to make informed opinions of their own, rather than attempting to prejudice them ahead of the facts with the author's own orthodoxy.

This passing of opinion off as news is a primary cause for the low esteem that the public has of "news" sources.  The proper role of journalism in a democracy is to inform, not to form, public opinion.