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. The NPR article was actually about Vance; The Times piece finally acknowledged that Walz was not in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre; but the majority of outlets took a piecemeal approach, asking who won the debate and ignoring what even numerous leftist reports have declared was a clear victory for J.D. Vance. Slate even went to the pain of framing a piece on why Walz lost instead of how Vance won in an article with the headline: “The Brutal Tim Walz Tactical Error that Cost him the Debate.”
When MRC researchers conducted the same Google News tab searches hours prior to the debate, Google produced similarly biased results. MRC analysis revealed 90 percent of the search results in both searches were from left-leaning news outlets. Each set of results included only one article from Fox News Digital.
Although Fox News pieces appeared first and fourth in the Google News tab results, it was the only news outlet that the platform produced that does not consistently demonstrate a leftist political bias.
The continued bias from anti-free speech Google comes after the search giant dismissed an MRC study further uncovering the search engine’s bias favoring the left in searches for “donald trump presidential race 2024” and “kamala harris presidential race 2024.” Researchers caught the company promoting an avalanche of left-leaning news above the two presidential candidate’s websites.
Google told Fox News that MRC’s study 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.
By now it should be clear, this is not an isolated incident. This is the 21st election-related Google study MRC has conducted, and each study has yielded similar results.
For example, an October 1 study showed that when MRC Free Speech America researchers searched for “kamala harris presidential race 2024,” no U.S.-based news outlet rated “lean right” or “right” by media ratings firm AllSides appeared until Google placed Fox News as the fifth result on the 13th page of results. Similarly, in a search for “donald trump presidential campaign websites” Google buried the first U.S.-based “lean right” result, a New York Post article, as the third result on the 14th page.
Last week, when MRC Free Speech America researchers conducted the same two searches, again not a single “right” or “right-leaning” outlet appeared on the first page of Google’s search results. Researchers saw this same pattern the day after the second Trump assassination attempt, and during the 2024 National March for Life.
MRC even compiled an expose on the 41 times Google or its executives helped push their favored Democrat candidates across the finish line. This meta-analysis included studies conducted by MRC as well as studies by research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein and many others who have come to a similar conclusion–that Google uses search results to interfere in elections, and has been doing so for years
Methodology: For this report, MRC Free Speech America analyzed the Oct. 1 and Oct. 2 Google News results of the innocuous words “jd vance” and “tim walz.” MRC Free Speech America created an algorithm to automate this process in a clean environment. A “clean environment” allows for organic search to populate results without the influence of prior search history and tracking cookies.
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