Just one day after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apparently steered his platforms away from censorship and election interference, Google shamelessly pressed on with its efforts to rig search results against President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees.
Following Zuckerberg’s Jan. 7 announcement, MRC Free Speech America researchers once again searched Google for the names of Trump’s cabinet-level nominees as well as other important officials such as FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and FBI Director-nominee Kash Patel. Researchers conducted these searches using Google’s general search and its News tab feature. Using media bias ratings provided by AllSides, MRC researchers found that Google did not display a single U.S.-based “lean right” or “right” article for 68 percent of general searches on the first page of results.
Indeed, for the general searches, Google yielded U.S.-based right-leaning sources for only the names of eight nominees. Overall Google provided over nine times as many articles from outlets rated “lean left” or “left” in the general search. This included articles from leftist outlets such as The Huffington Post, MSNBC News, and the ESG enthusiasts at Bloomberg News. Google also flooded the results with legacy media outlets such as The New York Times, CNN and the Big Three networks as well as leftist, taxpayer-funded PBS and NPR.
As in most prior searches, Google provided no news articles in the general search for Christopher Wright, Trump’s choice to run the Department of Energy.
The Jan. 8 News tab search failed to provide a U.S.-based “right” or “lean right” result for 12 of the 26 nominees (46 percent), but Google did manage to find space for a hearty serving of vicious attacks and leftist and legacy media articles. Google stuffed the News tab search results with over seven times as many articles from “left” or “lean left” sources.
And these articles went after Trump’s nominees over and over again. Users trying to find news coverage of Trump’s choice to run the Department of Energy, Lee Zeldin, on Jan. 8 would find a Nov. 13 headline from climate cult publication Inside Climate News warning of Zeldin’s “Radical Game Plan.”
Google also once again acted as an enabler for fierce media attacks on nominees that Democrats and the media are seeking to take down such as Pete Hegseth (the nominee for Defense Secretary), Russell Vought (the nominee for OMB Director), RFK Jr. (the nominee for HHS Secretary) and Patel (the nominee for FBI Director).
Patel’s results were filled with negative coverage from MSNBC News, NBC News, The Guardian, The Hill, Mediate and The Bulwark (which AllSides rates as “lean right” despite Bulwark writers’ embrace of radical Democrats and leftist policies). One of the negative articles Google included from The Guardian even complained about a children’s book by Patel. Thank you for the important update, Google.
Meanwhile, Google saturated the results for RFK Jr. with hyperbolic negative headlines, including an article by the Independent (U.K.) hyping a Democratic senator’s pronouncement that “‘Kids will get killed.’” Additionally, Google planted an attack at the very top of the News tab results for the potential HHS Secretary with a New York Times op-ed. The op-ed pronounced RFK Jr. “Unfit to be HHS Secretary,” and included a blurb that proclaimed, “Before I was governor of Hawaii, I saw how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. contributed to a measles outbreak in Samoa.” Google also included a Washington Post article exploring the same topic as the third result for the nominee’s name.
The search engine similarly promoted nasty articles about Vought, as seven of the 10 News tab articles highlighted Vought’s work on Project 2025, apparently to drive a wedge between Trump (who condemned the project) and his nominee.
Finally, Google continued its weeks-long vendetta against Hegseth, once again including a New Yorker hit piece exploring many popular lines of attack against Hegseth. Other articles Google provided included one by The New York Times that used Hegseth’s mother to attack him and an NPR story about accusations against Hegseth.
As a final indignity, Google’s News tab results included an attack from the exceedingly reckless leftist publication Rolling Stone, which claimed that the decorated veteran that Trump nominated to run the Department of Defense was a “Threat to Veterans’ Health Care and Benefits.”
Methodology
For this report, MRC Free Speech America analyzed the Jan. 8 Google Search and News tab results for the first and last names of 24 men and women nominated for cabinet-level positions in the second Trump administration as well as Trump’s choice for FCC chairman and Trump’s choice for FBI director. 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 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 study included leftist anti-Trump publication The Bulwark as a “lean right” result multiple times since AllSides rates The Bulwark as “lean right.”
Nominees searched on December 26 and January 2 include Scott Bessent, Pamela Bondi, Douglas Burgum, Brendan Carr, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Doug Collins, Sean Duffy, Tulsi Gabbard, Jamieson Greer, Kevin Hassett, Peter Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kelly Loeffler, Howard Lutnick, Linda McMahon, Stephen Miran, Kristi Noem, Kash Patel, Brooke Rollins, Marco Rubio, Elise Stefanik, Scott Turner, Russell Vought, Susan Wiles, Christopher Wright and Lee Zeldin.
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