Google's denial of political search bias gets pushback: 'Just as clear as day'

Media Research Center founder and president Brent Bozell pushed back on criticisms of his organization's report on alleged political bias by Google with its search engine.

The MRC is calling on Google to "stop its war on democracy" and "provide algorithmic transparency" after the media watchdog’s Free Speech America initiative analyzed the 12 critical Senate races identified by RealClearPolitics as important to watch. 

The findings revealed that campaign websites for 10 Republicans among the 12 tight races were found significantly lower on results pages compared to their opponent’s sites among organic search results

Bozell told "America Reports" on Tuesday that Google controls almost 93% of search traffic worldwide, adding a fraction of a percent of people go beyond the first results page.

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"In seven of the 12 cases, the Republican [candidates] had been pushed to a page to show that if you are somebody searching that Republican, that person doesn't exist – For all intents and purposes, the Republican candidate is a non-person. And that's Google that deliberately put them on page two," he claimed.

Google responded to that claim, according to "America Reports," saying that Bozell's reportage is "designed to mislead, testing uncommon search terms that people rarely use."

"Anyone who searches for these candidate names on Google can clearly see that their camp campaign websites rank at the top of results. In fact, all of these candidates currently rank in the top three and often the first part in Google search results," the company said in a statement cited by "America Reports."

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Host John Roberts said Google's issue wasn't with the search itself, but how MRC searched – offering the example of "Adam Laxalt Senate Nevada 2022."

Roberts said all 12 Republican candidates in the key races are indeed returned in the top three result entries, but that when a finer search like the Laxalt example, the Democrat's campaign site appeared near the top but the Republican's didn't."

"That's right. So it's not just the way that you're searching," Bozell replied.

"We look at everything. Apples to apples, so it's fair. Their answer this afternoon is much better than their answer on "Fox & Friends" this morning, where they said they hadn't seen the study, but it was wrong."

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Bozell cited a new RNC lawsuit against Google, alleging it helped direct Republican fundraising appeals to recipients' spam folder, adding that that alone shows an entrenched bias against the GOP.

"They have a protection -- a liability protection. It needs to be addressed," he said, appearing to cite Section 230.

"These tech companies need to be held to the same account as Fox News, to the same account as any journalist operation. They are not if they're not objective platforms, they are publishers. They have agendas. They're manipulating the data because they have political agendas. It's just as clear as day."

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Bozell went on to cite how Facebook and other Big Tech firms censored or suppressed reportage of the Hunter Biden email bombshell, adding that a survey taken after Donald Trump's loss to Joe Biden that about 6% of Biden voters – which he calculated as enough to swing the electoral college to Trump – would have voted for the New York mogul had they heard of Hunter Biden or about allegations against him.

"They banned The New York Post from Twitter for reporting on something that, oh, by the way, had the added benefit of being true," he said.

Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report.