It’s Personal: Google Suppresses MRC’s Free Speech America Website in Search Results
April 27th, 2023
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Big Tech giant Google has taken to suppressing MRC Free Speech America in an apparent vendetta to punish the Media Research Center division for its work exposing its explicit anti-conservative bias and censorship.
MRC Free Speech America analyzed Google search results for “mrc free speech america” and found scathing evidence of Google’s censorship against the organization. “It looks like there aren’t many great results for this search,” Google warned at the top of the first page of search results. “The results below match your search terms, but some of them may not have reliable information on this topic.” The warning appears to be an attempt to dissuade users from the organization's sites and thwart its reach, page engagement and interactions.
Here are MRC Free Speech America’s findings:
- Google actively worked to suppress MRC Free Speech America for at least three consecutive weeks. MRC Free Speech America researchers found that MRC Free Speech America’s official web page was buried under a Google warning that called into question the reliability of the Media Research Center’s web pages for three consecutive weeks. Google’s warning echoes a similar tactic implemented by Meta platform Facebook when it uses interstitial pop-ups that the platform itself has acknowledged dissuades users from clicking through according to The Associated Press.
- Google’s search result bias is undeniable when compared to Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Tusk. When searching for “mrc free speech america” using Bing and DuckDuckGo, both browsers showed MRC Free Speech America’s page on NewsBusters as the first result when researchers performed searches on March 27, April 4 and April 10. MRC researchers added the search engine Tusk for its third search on April 10, and the organization’s page on NewsBusters was displayed first using that search engine as well. Google was the only one of the four search engines to display a warning or alert when searching for “mrc free speech america.”
- The suppression occurred after MRC Free Speech America exposed Google for bias and censorship. MRC Free Speech America research caught Google manipulating search results to benefit leftist causes and political campaigns on at least four separate occasions. In October 2022, Google buried search results of Senate Republicans' campaign websites weeks ahead of the midterm elections. MRC Researchers later found that Google buried the campaign websites of its strongest critics on Capitol Hill. MRC Free Speech America also uncovered the same tactic in the consequential Georgia runoff election in Dec. 2022. Google even promoted Planned Parenthood a day before the 50th anniversary of the pro-life March for Life event when searching for the innocuous term “pregnancy.”
- Google’s hypocrisy was made obvious by not attempting to warn searchers away from leftist outlets that posted unreliable information. MRC researchers made a clean environment search on April 14, 2023, for leftist outlets BuzzFeed, Mother Jones, and Jacobin — all of which have presented unreliable information on their sites. MRC publishes reliable content, while BuzzFeed and Mother Jones still have published on their sites the discredited Steele Dossier. Meanwhile, Jacobin’s Marxist writings call for the destruction of America’s economic and political systems. Unsurprisingly, Google did not warn or alert users as to reliability concerns for these leftist outlets.
It’s Personal: Google Suppresses MRC Free Speech America in Search
Google punished MRC Free Speech America, months after MRC researchers caught the Big Tech giant manipulating search results to benefit leftist causes.
Researchers for MRC Free Speech America found that the un-American search giant suppressed the search results for “mrc free speech america” by slapping a warning message accompanied by a blue triangle with an exclamation point in the center. “The results below match your search terms, but some of them may not have reliable information on this topic,” Google warned users. MRC Free Speech America is the Media Research Center’s division that tracks Big Tech censorship and promotes free speech online.
Google actively worked to suppress MRC Free Speech America for at least three consecutive weeks.
Using a “clean environment” search, the researchers found scathing evidence that shows Google actively worked to suppress MRC Free Speech America for at least three consecutive weeks by questioning the reliability of the Media Research Center. The un-American search engine, however, provided no evidence for its biased characterization of the Media Research Center websites and pages.
The Big Tech giant's search results displayed MRC Free Speech America’s sister sites first and the division's official page on NewsBusters appeared fourth. Google's second search result listed the Free Speech Alliance website, which hosts information on an MRC-led coalition of over 100 pro-free speech organizations. The official site of MRC Free Speech America’s parent company, MRC.org, was listed third.
The Google warning echoes a similar tactic that Meta implements on Facebook when it uses interstitials or pop-ups that warn about the validity of information. The platform itself has acknowledged that such interstitials dissuade users from clicking through to the initial post(s), according to The Associated Press.
Google’s search result bias is undeniable when compared to Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Tusk.
Google denied any wrongdoing in response to MRC Free Speech America’s previous studies and analyses in the lead-up to the 2022 elections, but the company’s search result bias was shown to be undeniable when compared to Bing, DuckDuckGo. The same is true in this study. Researchers used Bing and DuckDuckGo to search for “mrc free speech america” on March 27, April 4 and April 10, and all three sites showed MRC Free Speech America’s page on NewsBusters.org as the first result without any warning or alert.
MRC researchers added the search engine Tusk for its third search on April 10. The Tusk results resembled those found via Bing and DuckDuckGo: The organization’s page on NewsBusters.org was again displayed first. Of the four search engines tested, Google was the only one to display a warning, or alert, when searching for “mrc free speech america.”
The suppression occurred after MRC Free Speech America exposed Google for bias and censorship.
As previously noted, this is not the first time Google has manipulated its search results in a biased manner. MRC Free Speech America researchers caught Google manipulating search results to benefit leftist causes and political campaigns on at least four separate occasions.
In October 2022, MRC Free Speech America reviewed 12 Senate races identified by RealClearPolicts as the most important elections to watch. Using a clean environment search, MRC Free Speech America researchers found that Google buried 10 Senate Republicans' campaign websites in its search results just weeks ahead of the midterm elections. Seven of the 12 races did not even appear on the first-page search results, effectively suppressing the reach of those campaigns. The bias did not carry to the 36 top House races, which did not hang in the balance, MRC Free Speech found at the time.
Using the same clean environment search, MRC researchers later found that Google buried the campaign websites of the company’s 10 strongest critics on Capitol Hill. Google censored the search results for Big Tech critics 100 percent of the time, either ranking their sites lower than that of their challengers or totally omitting Republican Big Tech critics’ campaign sites from the first page of results entirely.
MRC Free Speech America uncovered the same tactic, for the third time, in the consequential Georgia runoff election in Dec. 2022. The scathing revelation showed that Google’s results favored Warnock in the swing precinct where greater proportions of undecided voters likely reside. Warnock’s campaign website appeared third in Google search results, but the platform scrubbed Walker’s website from the first page of results altogether.
Google even promoted Planned Parenthood a day before the 50th annual pro-life March for Life event when researchers searched for the innocuous term “pregnancy.” MRC researchers also searched Bing and DuckDuckGo and found that they provided more neutral results, showing Healthline.com’s “overview” on pregnancy.
Google’s hypocrisy was made obvious by not attempting to warn searchers away from leftist outlets that posted unreliable information.
Google’s apparent vendetta against MRC Free Speech America became obvious after researchers searched for leftist outlets with well-documented histories of posting unreliable information. MRC researchers made a clean environment search on April 14, 2023, for leftist outlets BuzzFeed, Mother Jones, and Jacobin — all of which have presented unreliable information on their sites—and found no warnings on the results.
MRC publishes reliable content, while BuzzFeed and Mother Jones still have published on their sites the discredited Steele Dossier. In a report titled “The media’s fail”, Axios slapped down Mother Jones for championing the defunct dossier. Similarly, BuzzFeed said it had no plan to take the document down. Axios called the occurrence “one of the most egregious journalistic errors in modern history, and the media's response to its own mistakes has so far been tepid.” Meanwhile, Jacobin displayed its blatant support for Marxist propaganda in an October 2021 article headlined, “Socialism Isn’t Just About State Ownership — It’s About Redistributing Power.” In yet another display of Marxism, Jacobin celebrated how “[s]ocialism is back on the agenda in the United States, thank God. And today’s newly minted socialists shouldn’t be afraid to embrace Marxism.” Unsurprisingly, Google did not warn or alert users regarding reliability concerns for these leftist outlets.
Conclusion:
MRC Free Speech America’s vision is to see a world where Big Tech does not censor constitutionally-protected speech in America. This latest study supports previous findings: Google uses its size and monopolistic influence to impact Americans in profoundly negative ways, and this time, MRC Free Speech America was Google’s target.
Methodology
For this report, MRC Free Speech America analyzed the Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo search results for “mrc free speech america” for three consecutive weeks, first on Monday, March 27, 2023; again on Tuesday, April 4, 2023; and on Monday, April 10, 2023. Researchers also performed the same search for search engine Tusk on April 10, 2023.
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.
MRC Free Speech America researchers searched “mrc free speech america” using the algorithm. To determine bias, our researchers looked at each search engines’ results and recorded the rank(s) of MRC’s Free Speech America division.