Did Google just use leftist Wikipedia to cover for news outlets that are due for a reckoning?
MRC researchers asked Google Search on Thursday whether NPR and PBS hid the Hunter Biden laptop story. At the top of the two searches, Google’s artificial intelligence weighed in with an emphatic no, citing none other than Wikipedia, which downplayed NPR’s “delayed” reporting and PBS’s initial “caution.” The responses ignored both a 2020 statement from NPR’s then-managing editor Terence Samuel saying that the outlet would not cover the story and the NPR CEO Katherine Maher’s recent admission that ignoring the story was the wrong approach. Yet, even the search results Google displayed below its AI response included the belated admission.
“No it is not accurate to say that NPR hid the Hunter Biden laptop story,” Google’s AI Overview began, later adding, “While NPR did report on the story, like other news outlets, their initial reporting might have been delayed due to the prevailing concerns about the story’s authenticity, as reported in Wikipedia.”
