The Media Research Center spent the entire 2024 presidential campaign pushing its highly dishonest and partisan narrative accusing Google of serving up biased search results based only on a highly flawed model that portrays any media outlet that’s not explicitly right-wing as “liberal.” There was even more of this in the week before the election. Tom Olohan wrote in an Oct. 30 post:
Google continues to go to great lengths to block users from seeing any right-of-center media outlets on 2024 presidential election news.
For the fifth consecutive week, Google rigged search results for “donald trump presidential race 2024,” shoving leftist and legacy media outlet articles into Americans’ faces. MRC researchers once again used AllSides “right” and “left” media bias ratings and had to dig deep to find the first right-of-center result for the Trump prompt search.
The first U.S.-based, right-leaning search result for the Trump prompt—a New York Post article—appeared as the eighth result on the fifth page of Google search results. This was the only right-of-center media outlet in the first 54 results, following 53 other results including left-of-center outlets such as Politico, CBS News and NBC News.
Yet again, Olohan did not examine the purported bias of any of those articles, nor did he bother to prove that the “left-of-center outlets” are as left as the New York Post is to the right. As we’ve noted, the AllSides categorization of the outlets is subjective and unscientific.
The next day, Luis Cornelio served up a side attack on Google division YouTube:
YouTube, the Google-owned video streaming platform, rebuffed pressure from The New York Times and The Washington Post to silence some prominent right-leaning and free-speech voices just days before the 2024 presidential election.
On Thursday, The Times and The Post published separate reports accusing several podcast hosts, news anchors and legal scholars of spreading so-called election-related misinformation on platforms such as YouTube. But, to the detriment of the left, a YouTube spokesperson affirmed that the platform would not censor the videos, claiming it values a range of opinions.
“The ability to openly debate political ideas, even those that are controversial, is an important value — especially in the midst of election season,” YouTube told both The Times and The Post, shocking many as the platform has had a reputation for censoring speech that the left disagrees with.
Not deserving of being called a free speech bastion by any means, the platform still removed three of the videos targeted and temporarily slapped an informational banner on 21 of them, most of which were later removed, according to The Times.
Cornelio offered no evidence that those right-wing videos were not spreading misinformation. Instad, he whined that right-wing attempts to undermine the election were called out:
In a separate report, The Post accused Shapiro, Johnson, and podcasters Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk of “preemptively casting doubt on the integrity of the 2024 election.”
Similar to The Times, The Post also contacted YouTube and other podcast platforms, requesting comments about the videos it deemed misinformation. However, YouTube similarly dismissed their request, reiterating to The Post the same statement it had provided to The Times.
Cornelio did not dispute the accuracy of the allegation. The claim parallels MRC executive Tim Graham whining that right-wingers were accurately called out for attacking fact-checkers whose work he did not dispute.
Patrick Doran served up another baseless attack on Google in a Nov. 1 post:
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) grilled Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai for allegedly corrupting his YouTube platform to censor former President Donald Trump’s Oct. 25 appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience.
Jordan condemned YouTube for its role in censoring the episode which has accumulated over 42 million views as of Friday. In a Wednesday letter, Jordan called for prompt answers from Alphabet: “We write to seek an immediate briefing on (1) YouTube’s decision to censor Joe Rogan’s interview with President Trump; and (2) Google Search’s elevation of material critical of the interview.”
Jordan’s requests came after the New York Post reported on Monday that a “search on YouTube using the terms ‘Joe Rogan Trump’ or ‘Joe Rogan Donald Trump’ did not bring up Friday’s three-hour sit-down at the top of the list.” The Post also noted that the interview was absent from YouTube’s trending page on Monday.
[…]Instead of the full episode popping up in the search results, researchers found YouTube featured small clips of the nearly three-hour-long episode. Can Google make it any more obvious that they were trying to censor Rogan’s most-viewed episode of the year?
But no evidence was offered that Google was, in fact, trying to “censor” the episode. Indeed, the episode had more than 40 million views, so it appears people were finding it just fine without Google. Doran didn’t mention that Google had responded to questions saying it was a search issue and it would be fixed.
On the day of the election, Nov. 5, Catherine Salgado called on the MRC’s favorite Google-hating, credibility-challenged researcher:
New data just revealed Google ratcheting up its election interference efforts using its “Go Vote” reminders in seven pivotal swing states.
Research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein heads America’s Digital Shield, which documents Big Tech’s efforts to manipulate individuals and what they see online without accountability. According to Dr. Epstein, America’s Digital Shield has revealed “alarming discrepancies in how Google sends out voting reminders to liberals, conservatives, and moderates,” with the Big Tech platform displaying an overt pro-liberal bias in its “Go Vote” Reminders the week before Election Day 2024. Google, according to Epstein’s data, sent more reminders overall to liberals than to moderates or conservatives, and is even displaying particular bias in swing states.
MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider explained the seriousness of Google’s election interference. “Google has been actively engaging in electioneering for years, but refusing to report its expenditures as required by law. This willful refusal is an obvious crime, the kind that should put Sundar Pichai behind bars,” Schneider said, referring to the CEO of Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
Schneider continued, “The left is already signaling who they will blame if Trump wins the election: Big Tech, for not censoring enough. The truth is that Big Tech has been all in for Kamala. And Google has been at the head of the class, helping her by burying Donald Trump’s campaign website, forcing users to read propaganda stories about Kamala and Trump, and now doing ‘get-out-the-vote’ work for her.”
We’ve documented how Epstein’s previous attacks on Google have been discredited for making sweeping conclusions of Google’s purported bias based on a very tiny data set of 21 voters. And again, Salgado insisted on applying the “Dr.” title to Epstein despite spending the past your years being angry that Jill Biden was described as “Dr.” over a similar academic title.