Behind the scenes, the campaign has been accompanied by the announcement this week by Google of a “news initiative” aimed at censoring independent news outlets like the World Socialist Web Site and promoting “trustworthy” news sources such as the New York Times and Washington Post. The announcement marks a significant intensification of measures, beginning with changes in Google’s search algorithm last April, that have led to a massive drop in search traffic to left-wing, anti-war, and socialist web sites.