In its lust to destroy Google, the Media Research Center concocted a narrative that Google’s searches are biased by purportedly favoring “leftist” media before the presidential election — a partisan claim based on dishonestly redefining mainstream media as being just as biased to the left as Fox News (and the MRC) are to the right. That dishonesty continued in an Oct. 1 post by Tom Olohan:
Google is at it again, forcing users to dig through 13 pages of search results before finally finding a story by Fox News in one search, and 14 pages before finding a story by the New York Post in another. These two results were the first U.S.-based right-of-center publications in two separate searches using the leftist search platform. Is Google living up to former President Donald Trump’s accusations of election interference?
Using the media list provided by AllSides that classifies publications based on their “right” to “left” bias, MRC researchers found that tech giant Google blanketed search results for “kamala harris presidential race 2024” and “donald trump presidential race 2024” with leftist, legacy media sources like CNN, The New York Times, NBC News and Politico. On Oct. 1, MRC researchers did not find any U.S.-based “lean-right” media outlets until Fox News appeared as the fifth result on the 13th page of Google search results for the aforementioned Harris search prompt. Likewise, Google buried the first U.S.-based “lean right” result for the aforementioned Trump prompt as the third result on the 14th page, as Google featured an article by the New York Post.
As we’ve documented, AllSides’ labeling methodology is highly dubious and subjective — indeed, it’s laughable for AllSides and the MRC to portray mainstream outlets like CNN, The Washington Post, NBC News, Politico and CNN as “leftist.” Further, no evaluation was performed on any of the articles from those outlets for their individual bias, so Olohan can’t possibly know if any bias actually exists, so he can’t prove that any of those mainstream sources are as far to the left as Fox News is to the right. Even more laughably, Olohan tried to smear a fact-checker by whining that “FactCheck.org—a member of the George Soros-funded Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network—appeared before any U.S.-based sources on the right.” He offered no proof that the fact-check in question was somehow “leftist.”
Gabriela Pariseau did something similar in an Oct. 2 post:
Google didn’t get the memo. At the Tuesday night debate, J.D. Vance said that the real “threat to democracy is censorship, but an MRC Free Speech America study performed this morning found that Google’s priority is promoting 100 percent leftist news, not preserving American freedoms.
The morning after the debate, MRC Free Speech America conducted a search in the Google News tab for “jd vance.” MRC analysis revealed that 100 percent of the results came from outlets with a leftist political bias. Google News tab did not display a single article from an outlet that did not have a predominantly leftist political bias
This overt leftist bias is especially concerning considering that according to a November 2023 Pew Research survey, a rising number of American adults receive their news from search. The study found that 15 percent of U.S. adults prefer to get their news from search engines which is up from 13 percent in 2022 and 11 percent in 2021.
The leftist news outlets Google News tab provided in its results for “jd vance,” included articles from the likes of The New York Times, BBC, CNN, TODAY, CBS News, USA Today, NBC News, The Hill, The Washington Post and Politico. One of the most slanted headlines was: “The Moment When Vance Dodged a Question but Said Plenty” published by The Times. The Post also piled on with an opinion piece headlined “At debate, Vance whines: You weren’t supposed to fact check me!”
In a follow-up search for “tim walz,” Google wasn’t much better. MRC analysis found that 90 percent of the results came from leftist outlets. Just one of the results came from America’s third most-viewed online news site, according to Statista, Fox News Digital.
The Google News tab results for “tim walz” included articles from The Guardian, BBC, CNN, The Post, Fox News, USA Today, NPR, CBS News, Slate and The Times.
Again, Pariseau did not examine the accuracy or even the purported bias of any of those articles she’s attacking — it’s just a lazy blanket attack based on the dubious analysis of others.
Pariseau returned with more shoddiness in an Oct. 4 post:
Google, for four days in a row, engulfed its Search with nine times as many articles from leftist media outlets than outlets without a predominantly leftist bias. This comes a week after the Big Tech platform attempted to dismiss an MRC Free Speech America search study as a mere one-off.
This week, MRC researchers conducted the same searches for “donald trump presidential race 2024” and “kamala harris presidential race 2024” every day for four days starting Sept. 30. Google continued to flood its search results with articles from leftist media outlets and videos above former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign websites. Altogether, Google displayed 45 articles from leftist, U.S.- and U.K.-based media outlets compared to just five without a predominantly leftist bias: NewsNation, Fox News and C-SPAN.
“Google owes the MRC and the American people an apology for its election interference,” said Media Research Center Founder and President Brent Bozell. “Google has been caught misrepresenting the facts.” “”
Google’s overt leftist bias is especially concerning considering that according to a November 2023 Pew Research survey, a rising number of American adults receive their news from search. The study found that 15 percent of U.S. adults prefer to get their news from search engines, which is up from 13 percent in 2022, and 11 percent in 2021.
The leftist, U.S.-based media outlets that Google credentialed by pushing them to the top of search results were as follows: The Washington Post, MSN, The New York Times, CNN, Politico, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Hill, NBC News, MSNBC, Forbes, NPR, CNBC, CBS and CBS News Bay Area.
The search engine also produced articles and videos from three leftist, U.K.-based outlets including The Independent, BBC and The Guardian.
Pariseau still refused to check any individual article for purported bias — further demonstrating that this is all for partisan show and to generate right-wing clicks. Despite Bozell’s partisan posturing, no “election interference” or fact manipulation has been identified.
The dishonesty continued in an Oct. 15 post by Olohan:
With only three weeks remaining before the election, Google continues to heavily push leftist media coverage of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in search results.
On Oct. 15, MRC researchers once again used AllSides “right” and “left” bias ratings and found that Google Search results for “kamala harris presidential race 2024” and “donald trump presidential race 2024” were dominated by a deluge of legacy media and far-left outlets. The results prominently featured CNN and The New York Times, and publications owned by leftist billionaires, such as Jeff Bezos’s The Washington Post and Marc Benioff’s Time. Not a single right-leaning outlet appeared in Google search results until Fox News was displayed on page eight for the Harris prompt and on page seven for the Trump prompt.
Tellingly, when searching for the aforementioned Harris prompt, Google did not display a single media outlet that AllSides rated as “lean-right” or “right” until a Fox News video appeared as the fourth result on page eight of the search results. For an actual “lean right” or “right” article, users had to go all the way to the fifth result of page 14 to find a New York Post piece.
Google buried the first “lean right” or “right” outlet as the third result on the seventh page when MRC researchers analyzed results for the Trump prompt, as Google finally displayed a Fox Business article in this spot. Google did not display another right-leaning outlet until The Telegraph appeared as the fourth result on page 11.
[…]Previous MRC Free Speech America studies have consistently exposed Google for its leftist bias in search results, which invariably favor leftist media outlets.
Once more: None of this is based on actual research — it’s just subjective partisan labeling. Rather than do any actual work, Olohan simply parroted the company line by claiming that “the MRC has conducted 23 studies on Google’s election-related search bias (19 at the time of Google’s dismissive response) and documented the search giant’s long history of election interference dating back to 2008.” But we’ve shown that those so-called studies are rife with dubious research and inflated numbers, so these partisan results can’t be trusted.