Did Google just use leftist Wikipedia to cover for news outlets that are due for a reckoning?
MRC researchers asked Google Search on Thursday whether NPR and PBS hid the Hunter Biden laptop story. At the top of the two searches, Google’s artificial intelligence weighed in with an emphatic no, citing none other than Wikipedia, which downplayed NPR’s “delayed” reporting and PBS’s initial “caution.” The responses ignored both a 2020 statement from NPR’s then-managing editor Terence Samuel saying that the outlet would not cover the story and the NPR CEO Katherine Maher’s recent admission that ignoring the story was the wrong approach. Yet, even the search results Google displayed below its AI response included the belated admission.
“No it is not accurate to say that NPR hid the Hunter Biden laptop story,” Google’s AI Overview began, later adding, “While NPR did report on the story, like other news outlets, their initial reporting might have been delayed due to the prevailing concerns about the story’s authenticity, as reported in Wikipedia.”
The bombshell New York Post story, detailing the Biden family scandals as revealed by documents on Hunter Biden’s laptop, immediately became a flashpoint just before the 2020 election. Verifying a story takes time, sure. But it matters little whether NPR’s reporting was “delayed” since NPR flat out refused to directly report on the story.
“We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,” said Samuel at the time, according to a tweet which the outlet never deleted even after it scrubbed the articles it published supporting the claim.
Google’s AI Overview and Wikipedia, however, completely glossed over NPR’s biased approach.
It’s also worth noting that it is not as though Google could not or would not show the other side of this story. In Google’s underlying search results, appearing below its AI answer, Google displayed articles from National Review, the New York Post and The White House, each of which noted Maher’s admission of error during a recent DOGE hearing. “NPR acknowledges that we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner,” she said.
Related: Google AI’s Bias Couldn’t Be More Clear in Answers on NPR, PBS
No kidding! A 2020 MRC poll found that 45 percent of Biden voters were unaware of the New York Post’s story, likely due to Big Tech censorship and news outlets like NPR’s refusal to report on the story. Had these Americans been fully aware of it, 9.4 percent of Biden voters would have abandoned him, flipping all six of the swing states he won to former President Donald Trump.
A search for whether PBS hid the Hunter Biden laptop story primarily brought up info about NPR and Twitter censoring the story.
Unsurprisingly, Google even included NPR and PBS links in its search results, and half of them had nothing to do with the Hunter Biden story.
Wikipedia, which has a history of blatant left-leaning bias, not only appeared in the AI results at the top for each of the prompts’ search results, but it appeared again a second time in results for each search.
MRC has previously exposed Wikipedia’s leftist bent, favoring left-leaning media as acceptable sources while effectively blacklisting those on the right. The online encyclopedia also allowed extremely biased edits of the pages of top Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Methodology: Using the web browser Brave in a private window to limit prior search history and cookies that could impact results, MRC Free Speech America researchers searched Google on May 29 for the words “Did NPR hide the Hunter Biden laptop story?” and “Did PBS hide the Hunter Biden laptop story?” Researchers then analyzed the Search results and AI responses for whether Google answered the question and for political bias.
Free Speech is under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment and provide an equal platform for all users. If you have been censored, contact us using MRC Free Speech America’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
