An audit executed by “All Sides” found Google significantly endorsed left-wing media coverage of last week’s El Paso and Dayton shootings. At the same time heavily suppressing center or right-wing coverage.
The Audit was published on All Sides website on August 7 in the wake of the El Paso (Texas) and Dayton (Ohio) shootings of August 3. They assessed 522 news articles based on ten different shooting related queries—targeting one of the top three results in Google’s “Top-Stories” over Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
It showed that of all the 522 queries entered, only 19 articles of the political right media showed up in the top results, even though a very broad search term, “Trump,” was used. The data showed a paltry 3.6 percent of the total news items on the fatal shootings came from the political right.
Of the nine other queries searched, the more moderate media sources like BBC, NPR, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal got almost no exposure by Google—let alone those on the political right.
Source: https://t.co/YkbgyiOgK0
— Tim Pool (@Timcast) August 12, 2019
AllSides claims it is a multi-partisan research institute that promotes news coverage from the left, center, and right that should be available alongside one another.
It employs researchers from all different political backgrounds and applies a unique patented Bias rating system on each media that is part of their investigation.
Only three conservative outlets, Fox, The Wallstreet Journal and Breitbart, accounted for these 19 articles. Furthermore, it showed that outlets with an AllSides media bias of “center” were outpaced by the political left media by 400 percent.
John Gable, CEO, and co-founder of AllSides said: “This analysis shows no direct evidence that Google is intentionally suppressing voices from the center or right on the shootings.” He continued, “But there was a clear and overwhelming bias in Google’s results covering these shootings, intentional or not.”
Because of the overwhelming presence of left-wing coverage, people using Google as their prime search engine for newsgathering will be heavily exposed to the political left articles.
The left-wing media emphasized that white supremacist and racist ideologies inspired the El Paso shooter. They tended to blame President Trump for the shooting because of his vehement anti-immigration stance that had allegedly motivated the shooter.
“The findings bolster claims of Google’s alleged anti-conservative bias, and reveal evidence of a possible preference for prominent outlets such as CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post,” AllSides reported.
“The results reinforce previous Google bias audits and reports done by AllSides and researchers at Northwestern University.”
That previous AllSides report found a 65 percent liberal bias in Google News results.
https://t.co/wjcrPxPZTT Audit: Google Favors CNN, Left Media in Biased Mass Shooting Search Results https://t.co/2psvmyrutD
— NewsBusters (@newsbusters) August 10, 2019
Last year, in a similar study done by AllSides (pdf), an equal amount of bias by Google was reported, where 65 percent of Google News coverage used left or left-leaning sources.
The findings correlate with an investigation done by researchers from the Northwest University and by an “unscientific” test executed by PJ media last year.
AllSides, however, does not suggest intentional bias at Google. “This analysis does not show any direct evidence that Google is intentionally suppressing voices from the right concerning the shootings. It may be that a lack of right-leaning news media overall accounts for the huge difference between left and right-leaning appearances in Google News. Also, it may be an unintended consequence of Google’s algorithm,” the nonpartisan group reported.
