Google’s relentless PR campaign against President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees is still ongoing. The Media Research Center has caught the search giant rigging the results for a fifth consecutive week.
MRC Researchers searched Google for the names of Trump’s cabinet nominees along with two additional top officials–Brendan Carr who Trump selected to Chair the FCC and Kash Patel who he selected as his FBI director. Researchers searched both via a general Google search and a news tab search each of which yielded results that were full of leftist articles from legacy media outlets attacking the nominees. Indeed, Google presented 15 times the number of articles from often hostile left-leaning sources than from outlets that media ratings firm AllSides rates as "right or "lean right."
For most of the nominees, Google did not present a single “lean right” or “right” result in the general search. Only five of the general searches returned any right-leaning articles to counteract the vicious attacks that legacy and leftist media hurled against Trump nominees. Indeed Google presented zero “lean right” or “right” search results for 75 percent of the nominees recognized by Google.
As in previous search studies for the names of Trump nominees, Google provided no relevant search results in a search for Christopher Wright, Trump’s choice to run the Department of Energy.
Google rigged the news tab results as well, providing over six times as many left-leaning articles as U.S.-based “lean right” or “right” articles. Absurdly, Google once again found space in the news tab results for climate cult propaganda outlet Inside Climate News and the aggressively anti-Trump publication, The Bulwark. AllSides rates The Bulwark as “lean right” even though The Bulwark’s writers advocated supporting Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris while embracing leftist positions on a number of issues.
The Bulwark article, which attacked potential Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, was just one of many negative articles that Google filled its search results with. At least fourteen of the twenty-five nominees were subjected to vicious attacks in the news tab results.
The articles that Google featured fiercely went after Patel providing at least six news tab articles attacking the nominee. Google elevated headlines that suggested Patel is a “conspiracy theorist,” and that he would run a “‘bureau of intimidation’” or a “Bureau of Retribution.” An MSNBC article fretted about Patel’s “normalization,” while another piece scolded one of his endorsers.
Google’s results also targeted Russell Vought, Trump’s chosen Director of the Office of Management and Budget. For the third week in a row, Google shoved the same ProPublica attack in users’ faces with an article headlined, “‘Put Them in Trauma’: Inside a Key MAGA Leader’s Plans for a New Trump Agenda.”
Additionally, Google filled its results for Pete Hegseth, Trump’s chosen Secretary of Defense and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK Jr.) the president-elect’s nominee for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services with negative articles. Google even included an attack on Elise Stefanik who is slated to be the next U.N. Ambassador in an article by the leftist publication The New Republic, headlined, “Trump Names U.N. Ambassador Who Will Wreck Gaza to Unseen Levels.”
All told, MRC researchers have exposed Google for rigging results for the names of Trump’s nominees on Nov. 19, Nov. 26, Dec. 3, Dec. 10 and in this report. Each study demonstrated that Google filled its results with personal attacks and absurd ratios of left-of-center vs. U.S.-based “lean right” or “right” articles. The Nov. 26 study found the worst ratio, showing that Google gave users 20 times more left-leaning articles than right-leaning.
Google’s attack against Trump’s nominees follows a campaign against Trump himself. A Sept. 6 MRC Free Speech America study demonstrated that Google required users to wade through a deluge of leftist news articles to get to Trump’s campaign website. Additionally, MRC researchers showed further election interference by Google on Oct. 1, Oct. 9, Oct. 15, Oct. 22, Oct. 30 and Election Day. This late push to block Trump’s return to the presidency follows years of similar election interference by Google.
Study after study found that Google consistently propped up legacy media outlets like ABC News, NBC News and CBS News which were going after Trump’s nominees not only in articles but also on air. A study by MRC senior research analyst Bill D’Agostino showed that from Dec. 1 to Dec. 14, ABC’s "World News Tonight," "CBS Evening News" and NBC’s "Nightly News,” provided 96 percent negative coverage about the nominees.
D’Agostino noted that the coverage aggressively targeted nominees who appeared vulnerable like Patel or Hegseth, in order to cause their withdrawal. D’Agostino scathingly blasted the networks’ bias, noting, “the only positive commentary any Trump nominee received on the broadcast networks was from his own mother.”
Methodology
For this report, MRC Free Speech America analyzed the Dec. 17 Google Search and News tab results for the first and last names of 23 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.
Nominees searched on December 17 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, 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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