Tom Olohan
Tom Olohan joined the Media Research Center as a Staff Writer for MRC Free Speech America and MRC Business in April 2023.
On Oct 15, MRC researchers once again used AllSides “right” and “left” bias ratings and found that Google search results for “kamala harris presidential race 2024” and “donald trump presidential race 2024” were dominated by a deluge of legacy media and far-left outlets. The results prominently featured CNN and the New York Times, and publications owned by leftist billionaires, such as Jeff Bezos’s the Washington Post and Marc Benioff’s Time. Not a single right-leaning outlet appeared in Google search results until Fox News was displayed on page eight for the Harris prompt and on page seven for the Trump prompt.
Tellingly, when searching for the aforementioned Harris prompt, Google did not display a single media outlet that AllSides rated as “lean-right” or “right” until a Fox News video appeared as the fourth result on page eight of the search results. For an actual “lean right” or “right” article, users had to go all the way to the fifth result of page 14 to find a New York Post piece.
Google buried the first “lean right” or “right” outlet as the third result on the seventh page when MRC researchers analyzed results for the Trump prompt, as Google finally displayed a Fox Business article in this spot. Google did not display another right-leaning outlet until the Telegraph appeared as the fourth result on page 11.
This overt leftist bias is especially concerning, as a November 2023 Pew Research survey shows an increasing number of Americans get their news from search engines. The study found that 15 per cent of US adults prefer getting their news from search engines, up from 13 per cent in 2022, and 11 per cent in 2021.
Previous MRC Free Speech America studies have consistently exposed Google for its leftist bias in search results, which invariably favor leftist media outlets.
MRC researchers have used the exact same prompts on different days and found that Google hides right-of-center results from all but the most determined users. On Oct 1, Google buried the first US-based “lean-right” or “right” search result for the Harris prompt on page 13, while hiding the first similar result for the Trump prompt on page 14. On Oct 9, Google placed the first US-based “lean right” or “right” search result for the Trump prompt on page 23. That same day, Google showed zero American right-of-center news outlets for the Harris prompt until page 11.
A September study revealed that users trying to find Trump’s campaign website had to wade through a gauntlet of leftist articles before reaching it. Following the release of the MRC study, Trump condemned Google’s behavior in a post on Truth Social, vowing legal action in a potential second administration.
“It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He went on to refer to Google’s behavior as “ILLEGAL ACTIVITY” and promised to prosecute their election interference when he takes office.
Google, on the other hand, absurdly tried to dismiss the study, claiming that the MRC study used a “rare search term on a single day several weeks ago” in an attempt to portray the results as nonrepresentative.
But the MRC has conducted 23 studies on Google’s election-related search bias (19 at the time of Google’s dismissive response) and documented the search giant’s long history of election interference dating back to 2008.
For example, Google buried Trump’s campaign website so far down that it did not appear on the first page of results during the Republican National Convention and ahead of the July presidential debate between Trump and Biden. The search giant also did this while Trump shortly after a guilty verdict following Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s politicized prosecution of him.
This is just one of a myriad of ways that Google has interfered in American elections on behalf of its favored candidates. In fact, Google meddled in American elections no fewer than 41 times from 2008 to 2024, including by burying 83 percent of the Republican campaign websites for the most competitive Senate races during the 2022 midterm elections.
Methodology
For this report, MRC Free Speech America analyzed the Oct. 15 Google search results of the innocuous words “donald trump presidential race 2024” and “kamala harris presidential race 2024.” MRC Free Speech America used a private window utilizing the Brave privacy browser to analyze Google search results to limit the influence of prior search history and tracking cookies. MRC Free Speech America also utilized the AllSides media bias chart as a gauge to determine which outlets are “right” and “lean right.” AllSides notes it has a “patent on rating bias and use[s] multiple methodologies,” not a homogenous group or an algorithm. “Our methods are: Blind Bias Surveys of Americans, Editorial Reviews by a multipartisan team of panelists who look for common types of media bias, independent reviews, and third-party data.”
Readers should be aware that this report only uses the AllSides list to analyze ratings of outlets considered by AllSides to be “right” and “lean right” and does not necessarily reflect MRC’s characterizations of these outlets.
This article was originally published by NewsBusters and republished by PA Pundits – International.
