MRC Launches More Partisan Attacks On Google Over Purportedly Biased Search Results

In the runup to last year’s midterm elections and runoffs afterward, the Media Research Center tried to play gotcha with Google by accusing it of bias against Republicans because a certain search term didn’t put Republican candidates at the top — even though it never explain why that particular search term should have returned the results it demanded. It’s playing the same bogus search-result gambit again, this time framing it as so-called “election interference.” Gabriela Pariseau and Michael Morris wrote in an Aug. 24 post:

Google’s election interference is just getting warmed up as we head into 2024. 

MRC Free Speech America researchers searched Google for “presidential campaign websites,” but the search engine did not display a single Republican candidate on its first page of results the day before the first Republican Party presidential primary debate on Wednesday. President Joe Biden’s campaign website, of course, showed up as the second search result along with a Democratic Party challenger Marianne Williamson’s campaign website, which came up as the fifth result. 

Google even displayed results for past failed Democratic Party presidential candidates who aren’t even running this cycle, including: Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) website, which showed up as the ninth result; Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) campaign website, which came in twelfth; and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign website, which appeared twenty-ninth in the results.

Notably, 2024 Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., did not appear in Google’s search results even though he is, at present, the biggest threat to President Joe Biden’s nomination. 

“Google has erased every threat to Joe Biden,” said MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider. “We know that Google pulled out all the stops to put Hillary Clinton in the White House, and it has continued to interfere in our elections ever since. Compared to other social media platforms, it is harder to document what Google does in secret, but we at MRC Free Speech America have caught them red-handed again.”

Schneider continued, “Google has consistently stood apart from all other search engines, and not in a good way. We have repeatedly seen Google and Big Tech social media platforms treat Republican candidates harshly compared to their Democrat [sic] opponents.”

Weirdly, Pariseau and Morris did not state how Republican candidates ranked in the search findings, even though this “study” was specifically done before the first GOP debate. As before, they also failed to explain why that particular search term should have delivered the results it demanded, or even what normal human would use that search term. And their fretting over Kennedy not appearing in the results is merely part of the MRC’s ironic promotion of his campaign — not because they actually want him to win, but in the hope that it might hurt Biden’s re-election chances.

Pariseau repeated the same trick for a Sept. 27 post, under the headline “More Election Interference!”:

Is Google shilling for Biden? It appears so, as its search engine once again buried Republican “presidential campaign websites.” 

Google’s search engine failed to produce even-handed results in multiple searches performed by MRC Free Speech America over the course of a week prior to today’s Republican presidential primary debate. Researchers broadly searched for “presidential campaign websites” as well as two additional searches specifying the party affiliation of the candidates. When MRC searched for “republican presidential campaign websites,” only two candidates’ websites appeared on the first page in the search results — a Democrat candidate and a Republican who is polling at less than half a percent. 

Democratic Party candidate Marianne Williamson’s website somehow found its way onto the first page. So did Will Hurd, who has yet to garner enough support to make it to the debate stage. His website was the only Republican candidate’s website to appear in the search results. His website came up as the third result while the campaign websites of former President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Strive Asset Management co-founder Vivek Ramaswamy, Former Vice President Mike Pence, Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were nowhere to be found on the first page of results.

The search did include a link to a Library of Congress page that referenced Trump’s 2020 campaign website but even the link referenced was dead.

“These results are so outrageous,” said MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider. “Google is either the most incompetent search engine on the planet, or it’s intentional. This is not a coincidence.”

But the MRC undermined itself by injecting partsan terminology into its “study.” One of the terms used was “democrat presidential campaign websites”; right-wing activists like those at the MRC have spent years trying to rename the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Party” for the lulz. Speaking of ironic lulz, Pariseau added that “Biden’s most formidable challenger in the primary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ’s website was notably missing.” In fact, Biden was ahead of Kennedy by about 50 points at the time Pariseau’s item was posted, making her use of “formidable” at least as ironic as the MRC’s support for Kennedy itself.

Pariseau went on to complain that factual information about Republican candidates was noted in the results:

Each of the liberal outlets made clear their bias against GOP front-runner and former President Donald Trump, primarily listing controversial flashpoints of his administration in their respective write-ups. 

CNN, for example, characterized Trump’s criticisms of how the 2020 election was conducted as “conspiracy theories.” Meanwhile, Politico touted Trump’s alleged “numerous scandals,” while NBC and AP seemingly eagerly recounted recent criminal charges brought against the former president. CNN and Politico also touted Biden as the presumed Democrat nominee the GOP will face in 2024, not even acknowledging his two Democrat challengers.

Yes, Pariseau used “Democrat” instead of “Democratic” twice, further demonstrating teh partisanship that marks the MRC’s so-called studies. She also didn’t dispute the accuracy of the reporting she criticized, and she purported to read the mind of non-right-wing news organizations by claiming without evidence that they “seemingly eagerly recounted recent criminal charges” against Trump.

Parisau’s injection of partisanship into this so-called study shows the underlying bias in what she does — it’s clear that these search terms were chosen specifically to make Google look bad and, thus, to have clickbait talking points to spread throughout right-wing media. It’s the way a partisan organization acts — and certainly not one that purports to care about “media research.”