Google News, one of the egregiously biased Big Four News Apps, actively promoted a foreign state media outlet infamous for favoring jihadis.
Google News promoted no fewer than seven Al Jazeera articles in its daily top 20 stories on March 1-6, after American and Israeli forces launched strikes on Iranian regime targets in “Operation Epic Fury.” While Yahoo News did not promote as many articles from the Qatari state-funded outlet as Google did, the top article Yahoo presented readers on March 4 was the Al Jazeera piece: “What we know on day five of US-Israeli attacks on Iran.”
Al Jazeera has an AllSides rating of “lean left.”
While the Qatari government has shot down Iranian aircraft during Operation Epic Fury, Al Jazeera and the Qatari government have previously strengthened ties with the Iranian regime and defended its terrorist proxies like Hamas. Even more significantly, amid mounting evidence of Al Jazeera's connections to terrorism in 2024, the Israeli Knesset passed legislation to shutter the outlet’s Israeli offices over serious security concerns. All these alarming associations raise the question: Why is Google News promoting Al Jazeera reporting on a conflict with a terrorist-sponsoring regime?
MRC Vice President of Free Speech Dan Schneider said, “Google has been involved in rampant election interference for two decades. Just when you think they've plumbed the depths of evil, they show us there is yet another level of darkness. And we have them dead to rights. Google is now pushing state propaganda from one terror-sponsoring government— Qatar—to cover a U.S. struggle against the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, Iran.”
MRC findings:
- Google News shared seven Al Jazeera articles between March 1 and 6, three of them on a single day, March 3.
- In contrast to Google News, MSN and Apple News did not promote any Al Jazeera articles in their top 20 since Operation Epic Fury began.
One Al Jazeera article Google News shared on March 4 discussed funeral arrangements for the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed in a U.S.-Israeli strike. The story included warnings from President Donald Trump and Israeli officials that Khamenei’s successor could also be eliminated.
Al Jazeera framed Khamenei as a beloved “spiritual leader” and did not even hint at the many atrocities committed under his rule, such as the recent massacre of over 30,000 anti-regime protesters. Nor did Al Jazeera discuss Khamenei’s role as head of the worst terror-sponsoring regime in the world. Instead, Al Jazeera claimed, “Funeral arrangements are ongoing and are expected to draw huge crowds, and, with them, the potential threat of US-Israeli attacks on a gathering of mass mourning.”
Even worse, Google News’ top article on March 3 was from Al Jazeera with the headline, “What we know on day four of US-Israeli attacks on Iran.” The article did not acknowledge that the United States and Israel are targeting strategic Iranian military and government locations while the Iranian regime has been deliberately targeting and killing civilians across the Middle East, including at least four teenagers in Israel. Al Jazeera further repeated unconfirmed claims that the U.S.-Israeli strike wrecked a girls’ school in Iran, even as evidence indicates it could have been a misfired Iranian rocket.
The Qatari outlet particularly emphasized the bombing of Iran’s “Golestan Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site,” without explaining that the palace sat next to Iranian government offices, or that the only source to confirm the extent of the damage is that same Iranian government, which frequently makes false claims.
Methodology: During the time period March 1 - 6, 2026, MRC researchers examined the top 20 stories featured on Apple News, Google News, MSN and Yahoo News each day at approximately 8:30 AM ET. MRC researchers examined how many articles from Al Jazeera each news app presented to users.
