With Election Day just about a month away, voters researching candidates through Google News searches may be getting information from sources with a left-leaning bias. According to a study by the conservative media watchdog Media Research Center (MRC), Google, the largest search engine in the world, is prioritizing results from left-leaning news outlets.
Following the recent vice presidential debate, MRC found that headlines populating Google News under certain keywords were exclusively from left-leaning outlets. Specifically, a search for “J.D. Vance” on debate night revealed that every article, 100%, came from outlets with a Left political bias, including major organizations like The New York Times, BBC, CNN and CBS News.
A subsequent search for “Tim Walz” yielded only slightly better results, with 90% of articles from left-leaning outlets, and just one article from Fox News Digital.
This marks MRC’s 21st election-related study, all demonstrating similar patterns of bias. For instance, a study conducted the day before the debate found that searches for “Kamala Harris presidential race 2024” returned only left-leaning news until the 13th page of results, where a Fox News article appeared.
Similarly, a search for “Donald Trump presidential campaign websites” did not show a right-leaning result until the 14th page, where a New York Post article was listed.
Former President Trump took to Truth Social last week to express grievances about alleged biases in Google’s news search results, claiming the platform has “illegally used a system of only revealing bad stories about Trump” while promoting positive stories about Harris. He called this a “blatant interference of elections.”
In response, Google issued a statement to The New York Times, asserting that “both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of search for relevant and common search queries.”
The company refuted MRC’s findings, telling CNBC, “Queries about the presidential election or candidates generally surface links to constantly changing news articles reflecting what’s on the web — so they change all the time. We absolutely do not manipulate search results to favor any candidate.”
