The Media Research Center and its Free Speech America subsidiary remain under the mistaken impression that their so-called “research” on Google — in reality, a partisan war — has any legitimacy outside of its right-wing bubble, and Luis Cornelio tried to push that narrative again in a Sept. 30 post:
No, Google — the Media Research Center’s latest exposé into your anti-American meddling in the 2024 presidential election was far from an isolated incident.
Google made a feeble attempt to downplay an MRC study published Sept. 25 that demonstrated the tech giant has willfully and knowingly interfered in the upcoming November election. The study’s impact has prompted former President Donald Trump to vow legal action against the tech giant in a potential second administration.
In a dismissive and evasive response, Google told Fox News that the study—which revealed that Americans searching for Trump’s campaign website are forced to wade through leftist media outlets—was based on a “single rare search term on a single day several weeks ago.” The Big Tech company also insisted in comments to CNBC that it “absolutely” does not manipulate results to favor candidates.
What Google failed to disclose is that the MRC alone has issued not one but at least 19 studies detailing the company’s brazen manipulation of American elections. This includes reports of Google’s interference in the 2022 midterm elections as well as the 2024 primary elections. It has also attempted to manipulate public perception through its equally insidious influence through Gemini, its artificial intelligence chatbot.
As we pointed out at the time, the study in question made no effort to identify any actual bias in any “leftist media” story it attacked. Cornelio didn’t respond to Google’s accurate criticism that the study was based on a “single rare search term on a single day several weeks ago,” which tells us they’re conceding it’s true. And of course, his claim that the MRC has “at least 19 studies detailing the company’s brazen manipulation of American elections” is meaningless. Those studies are so wildly slanted and based on search terms no normal human would use, so the fact that there are “at least 19” adds nothing other than showing the MRC’s desire to smear.
Then, just to prove us (and Google) right, Tom Olohan served yet another example in an Oct. 1 post:
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.
[…]Equally concerning, the Google search results are not only filled with radical leftist websites such as Vox and Al Jazeera, but also include publications owned and supported by wealthy Democrats. Billionaire and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post. SalesForce CEO and longtime Harris donor Marc Benioff owns Time magazine. 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, as determined by AllSides.
Vox is “radical leftist”? Since when? According to who? And as we’ve documented, AllSides’ labeling methodology is highly dubious and subjective.
Olohan was at it again in an Oct. 22 post:
With only 14 days to go before election day, Google has not let up its efforts to bury right-leaning media and bolster leftist coverage in an apparent attempt to protect Vice President Kamala Harris and harm former President Donald Trump.
MRC researchers once again used AllSides “right” and “left” media bias ratings and found that Google Search results for “kamala harris presidential race 2024” and “donald trump presidential race 2024,” skewed wildly to the left. On Oct. 22, Google continued to prominently feature far-left and legacy media outlets such as Vox, NPR, CNN, The New York Times, and USA Today. Google’s search results also featured publications owned by leftist billionaires, such as Jeff Bezos’s The Washington Post and Marc Benioff’s Time, as well as Qatar’s Al Jazeera. Google did not display a single right-leaning outlet in search results until page four for the Harris prompt and page five for the Trump prompt.
The first search result that Google displayed from a media outlet that AllSides rated as “lean-right” or “right” came in the form of a New York Post article which appeared on page four of the search results for the Harris prompt.
Note that Olohan would not describe the New York Post as “far-right” though he once again baselessly called Vox “far-left.” Why the labeling disparity? And again, normal people do not use those search terms to find specific news about a campaign. Olohan also made no mention of the fact of Elon Musk’s election interference by using his X to censor news unfavorable to Trump.
Donald Perkins gushed in an Oct. 23 post that Trump repeated its anti-Google propaganda:
Former President Donald Trump rebuked Google for promoting negative stories about him two weeks before the 2024 election.
Trump sat down for a live Oct. 15 interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at an event hosted by the Economic Club of Chicago, where the pair discussed the recent federal cases brought against Google. The Department of Justice specifically accused Google of using monopolistic practices to secure its position as America’s top search engine.
“Google’s got a lot of power. They’re very bad to me, very very bad to me, I can speak from that standpoint,” Trump said in response to Micklethwait’s question about the ongoing lawsuit. Trump seemingly referred to an MRC study (published Oct. 15) that exposed Google’s bias when users searched for the Trump campaign. He added, “If I have 20 good stories and 20 bad stories—and everyone’s entitled to that—you’ll only see the 20 bad stories.”
This was not the first time Trump has come out against Google’s election interference during the election season—and not the first time MRC exposed Google’s bias.
The next day, Perkins touted a discredited anti-vaxxer trading Google-bashing talking points with a discredited anti-Google researcher:
Former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was terrified to hear of renowned Dr. Robert Epstein’s study uncovering Google’s election interference and censorship.
On the Oct. 22 edition of the RFK Podcast, Kennedy learned from Epstein about Alphabet’s attempt to influence the upcoming presidential election through its search engine Epstein is widely celebrated for his research involving big tech censorship, influence, and monopolization.
Epstein began the conversation by sharing how Google’s homepage disproportionately incentivizes Democrats to vote and warned of the control this gives it. “They’re sending out various kinds of vote reminders—register to vote, mail in your ballot, go vote—to Democrats at about two and a half times they’re doing to Republicans,” he told Kennedy. “Now think about that. Think how that impacts the vote over time, that’s why Google can control so many votes”
Kennedy inquired about methods Google employs to impact the thinking of undecided voters during an election year. Epstein shared the disturbing reality. “The one way they do it is by censorship. In other words, they suppress content and again, you don’t know what they don’t show,” he said.
No, Donald, Epstein is not “renowned” and is definitely not “widely celebrated” outside the right-wing bubble — he’s not even a doctor (it’s a Ph.D.). And it’s odd that the MRC is suddenly insistent on applying the “Dr.” title to him when it spent the past your years being being angry that Jill Biden was described as “Dr.” over a similar academic title.