D.C. Memo: Google Results Biased Against FCC's Carr, MRC Study Shows
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Carr: A conservative watchdog group says Google search results are returning far more negative than positive stories about major Trump nominees like Brendan Carr and Kash Patel. "[Media Research Center] researchers consistently found a glut of leftist articles and personal attacks when searching Google for the names of Trump’s cabinet nominees along with Brendan Carr and Kash Patel, his picks to head the Federal Communications Commission and the FBI, respectively," MRC reporter Tom Olohan wrote yesterday. MRC’s story said it used a media-bias ratings service called AllSides to evaluate Google results appearing in the General and News tab searches on Dec. 26 and Jan. 2. "MRC researchers found that Google consistently provided double-digit ratios in favor of leftist content in the general and News tab searches," Olohan said. "The search giant presented no fewer than 10 times more articles from leftist sources than right-leaning sources including a host of vicious media attacks on the nominees." MRC's research found that Google search results yielded far more copy from MSNBC, ProPublica, The Daily Beast, CNN and the New York Times than from conservative outlets. MRC's NewsBusters website has been pointing out examples of liberal media bias for decades. Three days after Trump's election, MRC Founder and President L. Brent Bozell, an influential voice on the right and a scion of the conservative Buckley family, called on Trump to pick Carr as his new FCC Chairman. Trump announced Carr's selection on Nov. 17, calling him a "warrior for free speech." On Nov. 13, Carr sent a letter to the heads of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft, accusing the Big Tech firms of participating "in a censorship cartel" intended to silence or marginalize conservative speech and that must be "completely dismantled." Two days ago, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg threw in the towel, saying Facebook would replace paid fact checkers with a community notes approach used by Elon Musk's X platform.
