MRC Still Pushing Bogus And Partisan Attacks On Google Search Results

Google is continuing its partisan war against Google over the search results it manipulates to claim that the results are somehow biased. MRC executive Dan Schneider touted that shoddy and biased work at a forum, as documented in an Oct. 10 post by Luis Cornelio:

MRC Vice President Dan Schneider raised the alarm about Google’s ongoing election interference ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Speaking at an Oct. 5 forum on Big Tech’s bias at the Paley Center for Media, Schneider highlighted an MRC Free Speech America bombshell report that unveiled how Google is once again burying Republican presidential campaign websites. Schneider warned that Google poses a threat to democracy in America through censorship. “Google’s probably the most effective at controlling and manipulating information,” Schneider said before warning that this censorship scheme presents a “real danger.”

“Our whole system of government is that each of us is to participate in this American experiment of self-government,” Schneider stated at the James P. Jimirro Media Impact Series forum. “But that only can take place if we have access to information, and when we’ve got a handful of people deciding what information should be accessible and what information should be hidden — like the campaign websites of several candidates on both sides of the aisle — that becomes a real danger.”

Our report, as detailed by Schneider, showed Google is out to get the most popular Republican candidates, going as far as highlighting the long-shot candidacy of Democrat Marianne Williamson and then-Republican candidate Will Hurd. “There was no Donald Trump, no Ron DeSantis, no Nikki Haley, no Vivek Ramaswamy, no Tim Scott,” Schneider said of the Sept. 27 MRC exposé. “We’ve been doing this for quite some time, and the search results remain the same.”

In fact, that “bombshell” is based on search terms that no normal human would use, seemingly chosen because they returned politically exploitable results, not because they were chosen through any sort of rigorous scientifc analysis. They also inject their own bias into the proceedings, using the word “Democrat” instead of “Democratic,” which further invalidates their results.Just as it had done before the first two debates — and with an apparent need to try and run up the score for partisan purposes — the MRC performed this biased exercise again before the third one, as Gabriela Pariseau wrote in a Nov. 8 post:

Republicans are about to have their third presidential primary debate, but Google continues to bury their campaign websites in search results.  

Google’s search engine once again favored Biden in searches conducted by MRC Free Speech America one week prior to the third Republican presidential primary debate. MRC researchers broadly searched for “presidential campaign websites” as well as four additional searches specifying the party affiliation of even the third-party candidates. Google continued to bury Republican candidates’ websites if their websites showed up on the first page of results at all. Meanwhile, Google’s AI chatbot previously — and with clear bias — ranked the presidential candidates when asked, but following the release of an MRC study on Bard, it is now staying mum.

In a search for “republican presidential campaign websites,” Google did not produce a single Republican candidate’s website. Shockingly not even Donald Trump’s website appeared even though he is polling above 50 percent according to all major polls. The search did come up with results for Marianne Williamson – who is running as a Democrat – and recent Republican dropout Will Hurd – who ended his presidential bid nearly a month ago after weeks of polling at zero. 

The campaign websites of Republican candidates Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott and Chris Christie were nowhere to be found on the first page of Google’s search results.

[…]

Google had no problem retrieving incumbent President Joe Biden’s or Williamson’s websites in a search for “democrat presidential campaign websites,” as they appeared as the first and third results respectively. In fact, Williamson’s website somehow managed to appear on the first page of results for nearly every search, including a search for “independent presidential campaign websites.” 

When MRC researchers searched for “independent presidential campaign websites” neither Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s website nor Cornel West’s website appeared on the first page of search results even though they are the only two running as independents. Similarly, Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver’s website did not appear in Google’s first page of search results when MRC researchers searched for “libertarian presidential campaign websites.”

As before, these are searches that no normal human would perform. Pariseau also injected her own partisan bias into the work with the phrasing “democrat presidential campaign websites”; right-wing activists like those at the MRC have spent years trying to forcibly rename the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Party” for the lulz. Pariseau also made sure to qhote her boss spouting the company narrative:

It seems Google is joining the charge in creating hurdles for Trump. “Much like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Google appears to be doing everything it can to make sure Trump isn’t a recognized candidate for the 2024 presidential election,” said MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider.

Pariseau lazily repeated her work before the fourth debate for a Dec. 5 post:

Google continues to prop up Biden and bury his opponents’ campaign websites in search results, according to the results of MRC Free Speech America’s newest study.

For the fourth time in a row, Google’s search engine has once again favored Biden in searches conducted by MRC Free Speech America one week prior to the Republican presidential primary debate. MRC researchers broadly searched for “presidential campaign websites” as well as five additional searches specifying the party affiliation of even the third-party candidates. Google continued to bury Republican candidates’ websites if their websites showed up on the first page of results at all.

In a search for “republican presidential campaign websites,” Google did not produce a single Republican candidate’s website. Shockingly not even former President Donald Trump ’s website appeared even though he is polling above 50 percent according to all major polls. The search did, however, come up with results for Marianne Williamson – who is running as a Democrat – and recent Republican dropout Will Hurd – who dropped out of the race in October after weeks of polling at zero. 

The campaign websites of Republican candidates Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley and Chris Christie were also nowhere to be found on the first page of Google’s search results.

Again, Pariseau used the inaccurate and biased term “democrat presidential campaign websites,” and again, she did not explain what normal human would conduct searches like these or why the results purportedly constitute “election interference,” as she claimed in her headline.