I haven't seen details of Google's 'newsrank' patents, but am pretty sure that Moreover's 'source rank' which does pretty much the same thing, by the sound of it, and which has been made public to clients since 2001, would constitute prior art.

BetaNews | Google Plans to Rank News By Quality:

"Patents recently filed by search giant Google reveal that it plans to soon rank news stories by the quality and credibility of the source, rather than just by date or relevance as it currently does in its searches."