The MRC vs. Google: The Bogus Bias Battle
The Media Research Center has been lashing out at Google in general, and Google News in particular, for failing to be the right-wing shills it demands Google to be.
The Media Research Center continued to wage war on Google throughout 2025, including a Sept. 24 post by Jorge Bonilla:
The legacy media have cast themselves as staunch defenders of the First Amendment as they circle the wagons for Regime comic Jimmy Kimmel. However, they are nowhere to be seen as Google admits to censorship of conservatives under pressure from the Biden White House.
Here’s the related story that was reported on Fox and Friends on Wednesday, September 24th, 2025:
Actually, Trump leads the current regime, which makes Kimmel … not a “Regime comic.” And of course Bonilla cites “Fox & Friends” — Fox News is the MRC’s favorite news outlet, after all. He continued to huff:
This was a direct, egregious attack on freedom of expression, directed from The White House, that has drawn no coverage across the legacy dial. Which is strange, since they pretend to care about free speech. Put another way, they care about the free speech they care about.
You mean like how the MRC cares only about free speech when it involves their fellow right-wingers?
Michael Morris complained in an Oct. 7 post:
It’s not me. It’s you, a phrase rarely uttered in the dating world, and yet something Google seems to often repeat—but only when it has to.
Such was the tech giant’s counsel-written statement in response to a subpoena from Chairman Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) House Judiciary Committee regarding censorship. From the letter:
“It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden Administration, attempts to dictate how the Company moderates content, and the Company has consistently fought against those efforts on First Amendment grounds,” [emphasis added].
MRC Vice President Dan Schneider nearly went line for line in an op-ed on the Alphabet counsel letter, ripping it to shreds for being little more than a “sly censorship ‘confession.’” In the New York Post piece, Schneider made sure readers were eyes-wide-open regarding what the letter actually conveyed:
“Google admitted little, promised less — and pledged to change nothing.
“It offered not confession but evasion.”
Google “revealed nothing new;” it “admitted no wrongdoing;” the platform “volunteered nothing;” it “clarified nothing;” Google “said nothing;” and perhaps worst of all, it “changed nothing.”
Morris did not allow Google to respond to Schneider.
Gabriela Pariseau raged the next day:
Even as the Trump administration works to broker a peace deal between Israel and Gaza, Google once again revealed its utter disdain for America’s ally.
On the second anniversary of the horrific Oct. 7 attacks that sparked Israel’s war in Gaza, the Google News home page promoted just two articles on the war and the ongoing peace negotiations currently in progress. However, Google promoted two of the worst news outlets looking back on the last two years: The Guardian and The Associated Press.
Pariseau’s definition of “worst,” however, meant she attacked reporting from the Guardian and the AP that actually questioned some actions by Israel during its war with Hamas. Apparently, that’s not allowed.
Pariseau returned for an Oct. 20 post:
If you performed a simple Google search for the names of mainstream journalists and thought leaders, you would expect to get a link to their profile or a link to their website or news outlet. But Google has served up something far more sinister.
The search giant fed its users dossiers from the disgraced left-wing activist groupSouthern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which is attempting to brand supporters of President Donald Trump as “extremists,” “white supremacists” and “bigots.” The group has smeared Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, podcast host and veteran Navy intelligence officer Jack Posobiec and The Daily Wire host Matt Walsh, to name a few, and it seems Google is more than willing to help push that narrative. Google promoted leftist Wikipedia — which repeatedly cited SPLC — and provided direct links to the SPLC website in search results.
“Google hates conservatives, so it is pushing SPLC filth while it pretends to be an innocent bystander,” said MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider. “There’s no reason SPLC should be one of the first results for Stephen Miller, Jack Posobiec or Chaya Raichick. This is a group that lumps together neo-nazi and Ku Klux Klan groups with freedom-loving Americans, concerned parents, practicing Christians and observant Jews.”
Pariseau went on to whine that Raichik was described as an “extremist” — as the founder of the homophobic, right-wing Libs of TikTok should be — instead of an “orthodox Jew.” Pariseau made no effort to disprove anything the SPLC wrote about Raichik, which undermines her claim that the group is “disgraced.”
Catherine Salgado raged in an Oct. 22 post:
Google could be in serious hot water after it reportedly programmed its artificial intelligence to make false accusations against filmmaker and podcast host Robby Starbuck.
Starbuck announced on X Oct. 22 that he is suing Google, accusing the company’s Bard, Gemini and Gemma AI of generating defamatory statements against him. He accused the AI bots of providing “fake criminal allegations including sexual assault, child rape, abuse, fraud, stalking, drug charges, and even saying I was in Epstein’s flight logs.” These claims are “100% fake. All generated by Google’s AI,” he said. I have ZERO criminal record or allegations.”
Now Starbuck, with the legal representation of the Dhillon Law Group, is taking the tech giant to court.
We don’t recall the MRC getting this wound up when an AI engine made up false allegations about a liberal.
The MRC’s war against Google for failing to spread right-wing propaganda continued in an Oct. 29 post by Tom Olohan:
A top Google executive made clear at a Wednesday hearing that the tech giant was proud of its censorship record. This admission may have dire implications for Big Tech’s ability to censor without consequences.
Markham Erickson, a government affairs executive at Google, repeatedly stated at a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing that though the Biden administration had pressured Google to censor, the search giant had ultimately acted independently. Erickson also emphasized that Google had not admitted wrongdoing or made changes despite settling President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the company for censoring him in 2021.
Ultimately, Erickson did not blame the third-party actors for the rampant censorship, but said, “No matter how the information comes to us, we feel a responsibility and are proud of the way we handle those communications to make independent decisions.”
Olohan didn’t mention that Google is a private company and, thus, cannot “censor” anyone.
Olohan whined again in a Nov. 3 post:
Big Tech behemoths have gone to great lengths to promote Wikipedia. Now, Google has been busted actively suppressing an emerging competitor.
Following the launch of Grokipedia, X owner Elon Musk’s “AI-driven” online encyclopedia, Google Search offered an outrageous response to users searching for Musk’s creation: “Did you mean: Wikipedia?” Immediately below this, Google taunted users with the least impartial source possible: a Wikipedia article on Grokipedia.
Yes, Google made Wikipedia the authority on its competitor and its first search result.
And where did Google put Grokipedia? Google buried it on the third page of search results, behind yet another result for Wikipedia’s entry on Grokipedia.
Olohan offered no evidence that the Wikipedia entry on Grokipedia was in any way incorrect. And despite claiming that “Both Google and Wikipedia are infamous for consistently pushing a leftist agenda and ensuring right-of-center sources don’t see the light of day,” he never proved that anything in the entry was “leftist.”
Of course, we have to ask: Given the MRC’s history of touting pretty much everything Musk-related (except for the nudification feature in Grok AI), can we assume that its promotion of Grokipedia reflects its right-wing bias?
Gabriela Pariseau brought her own brand of whining to a Nov. 6 post:
Google News is the only major Big Tech news aggregator that consistently highlights Al Jazeera, a network so sympathetic to radicalism that MRC’s Dan Schneider refers to it as “Hamas News.”
Google propped up the leftist Qatari-funded media outlet Al Jazeera a staggering 15 times in recent weeks. MRC analysis found that Google News was the only major news aggregator that consistently included Al Jazeera. Google’s persistent promotion of Al Jazeera, a network known for its hostility towards Israel, serves as yet another example of the tech giant’s disdain for the Jewish state.
Schneider commented on Google’s pattern of radicalism. “Every scientific evaluation of the major AI platforms shows that they are all biased to the left. But Google seems desperate to win the gold medal for being the most radical of them all,” he said. “This is just the latest example of how it pushes its agenda. It is no wonder that several Congressional committees and regulatory agencies are investigating it.”
Pariseau cited no evidence Al Jazeera is “leftist,” just a couple of examples of it not following right-wing narratives on the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Attacking Google News
The MRC’s attacks on Google News for failing to be sufficiently right-wing continued in a Jan. 22 post by Luis Cornelio:
December is often marked by celebration. However, for right-leaning media, the month was defined by censorship at the hands of Google News.
A new MRC study found that the tech giant’s news app suppressed right-leaning sources throughout December. For four weeks straight, Google News stifled right-leaning media, funneling unknowing users toward coverage dominated by leftist perspectives.
Note that Cornelio describes non-right-wing outlets as “leftist” while right-wing outlets are described only as “right-leaning.” He went on to show more bias:
Over the course of December, MRC reviewed the top 20 publications promoted daily on Google News, producing a sample of 600 total stories. Data for Dec. 2 was unavailable but would not have materially affected the results. Of the 600 stories, 522 came from outlets with AllSides bias ratings.
Here’s the breakdown of the 522 AllSides-rated articles, showing how Google News prioritized left-leaning outlets significantly more than right-leaning outlets throughout December: 367 were left (70) or lean left (297) and seven were right (6) or lean right (1), with the remaining stories (148) coming from center-rated outlets.
As we’ve documented, the MRC loves AllSides because its right-wing bias mirrors that of the MRC.
Cornelio repeated his deficient work for a Feb. 5 post:
Google News kicked off 2026 by largely shutting out right-leaning sources throughout January, continuing the censorship campaign that defined the digital gatekeeper in December.
Google News once again religiously promoted leftist outlets that created structural, headline-driven attacks against President Donald Trump and his administration.
Once again, Cornelio relied on the highly biased AllSides, which laughably portrays mainstream outlets like the Assoicated Press as “left.” He went on to rant:
MRC found that when Google News featured right-leaning outlets, the stories were rarely favorable to the political right. In fact, when right-leaning sources were placed prominently in Google News, the articles were often trivial, non-political or openly critical of Trump.
Of the 14 right-leaning stories Google News featured in January, two negative stories came from the notorious anti-Trump Bulwark.
Cornelio can’t dismiss the Bulwark as “leftist,” so he resorts to complaining that it’s “notoriously anti-Trump.” He went on to whine:
Headlines about Greenland, Iran and other major developments repeatedly clustered multiple, unrelated so-called crises around Trump, creating an impression of chaos tied directly to his presidency.
Trump’s push to acquire Greenland was framed not as a strategic dispute but as a destabilizing global threat, with Google News-promoted headlines attributing economic volatility and allied anxiety to Trump.
Cornelio did not explain why that should not be the prevailing narrative on Trump and Greenland.
Michael Morris joined the whining in a Feb. 25 post:
Google made sure its viewers knew its stance on President Donald Trump’s record-breaking State of the Union address with a flurry of elitist media hits against his speech on Wednesday morning.
In its coverage of Trump’s comments, Google News promoted eight leftist media outlets, while denying reporting from any right-leaning media outlets. Google painted a subtle but clear picture of its rejection of the president and his policies as it pushed reporting from outlets like The New York Times, Business Insider, National Public Radio (NPR), The Guardian and NBC News. The elitist media derided Trump’s speech, in some cases stating outright that it was rife with false and misleading claims, and in others framing stories around how Democratic lawmakers boycotted the speech entirely.
Morris offered no examples of right-wing outlets who provided the pro-Trump spin he demanded, nor did he explain what was wrong with non-right-wing outlets pointing out that Trump’s address contained “false and misleading claims” or why Democrats boycotting the speech should be censored.
Gabriela Pariseau did the monthly body count in a March 12 article:
Only a handful of right-leaning stories slipped through Google News’s iron grip on information domination. While the tech giant pushed 314 left-leaning stories, its gatekeepers only permitted 11 right-leaning articles to make the occasional appearance in the platform’s morning editions last month.
MRC uncovered that just 2% of Google News’s top morning stories in February came from sources rated right-leaning by media ratings firm AllSides. Google’s leftist bias is only further underscored by the fact that it completely shut out right-leaning outlets for over half the month.
Looks like Pariseau also got the memo about describing right-wing outlets as merely “right-leaning.” She too relied on the highly questionable AllSides.