<venton>
So, we run one of the leading websites in its field (10k+ uniques daily) and recently submitted our news section to Google News as a potential source.

Google news replies back with a rejection. The reasons given as the base of rejection are just pathetic. We have websites that are in far worst shape but are included in google news index.

We have websites that are identical CLONES of our website (banned member set it up) and they copy news from us, and other websites and give FAKE AUTHOR names yet recently google news included them as a "source." When the reasons that were given to reject a potentially legitimate source are also present in great numbers on website that google has included in the index but is using fake information to fake google news team!!!

Can anybody just make up names of authors and fake-source news stories to get included in google news index? How does Google news team check if its a good or bad source? Don't they use their own search engine to see which other websites could have the same lines of paragraph? LOL, Google is great search engine, great company but giving pathetic candy *** reasons to reject certain websites while ignorantly approving others is just stupid.
</ventoff>

What is your website?

If you're putting up a site and are copying news from other sites, or posting excerpts from other stories then linking to them, that isn't a valid news source. I'm sure google gets it wrong just like millions of other places at times.

But without even seeing your site, or the accused rip it's basically impossible to even answer your question.

if you're seeking input then let us know what the domain is. Otherwise, google has a policy it states on their site for this. Which you'll note it says upfront there is no team of anything, it's done strictly by algorithms. IN other words it's based on how many other sites deem your 'news' as legitimate and post links to it.

http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=40213

There are other very specific guidelines to follow to even be picked up:
http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/topic.py?topic=8871

You may also want to review Google Base
http://www.google.com/base

Well, when you SUBMIT a news source, SOMEBODY reviews it or is it done by algorithms?

When you are in the google news index, what and how your headlines appear in google news is done by algorithms.

To answer rest of your post: That is the problem. lol. Google violates its own rules and includes sites that are same or far worst than the sites it rejects. Meaning, some of the sites in there blantantly copy news and use fake author names instead of the ACTUAL SOURCE of the article so google "team" or algorithms think its a "good" source when it is not.

For example the clone site that copies from our website has the same setup (same layout, same CMS, same graphics, etc.), no organization, no author names list, same type of contact information and it was approved by the google "team" or algorithms while our website was rejected?