63% of Google News results are biased to the left, media watchdog group finds
76% of results for the search term 'abortion' were left-wing or leaning, 77% for 'climate change,' 78% for 'economy,' and 67% for 'election.'
News results presented to Google users are strongly biased to the political left, according to a recent analysis by media analysis firm AllSides Technologies Inc.
The report gave the internet giant a “Leans Left” rating after examining 494 Google News homepage articles and 480 articles from Google News search results across a two-week period between October and November 2023. It found that 63 percent of the results were from left-wing or left-leaning sources, as opposed to just 6 percent that were right-wing or right-leaning, 16 percent in the political center, and 15 percent that were not given a bias rating.
On Google’s homepage, “the top sources that appeared were CNN (Lean Left), the New York Times (Lean Left), Reuters (Center), Fox News (Right), and Yahoo! News (Lean Left),” the report says. “All of the top 10 sources curated were rated
Lean Left or Left, other than Reuters and Fox News.”
Even more lopsided were the biases of the sources yielded by specific search terms. Seventy-six percent of results for “abortion” were left-wing or leaning, 77 percent for “climate change,” 78 percent for “economy,” and 67 percent for “election.”
The analysis goes on to note that results on the left and right both increased slightly compared with 2022,
and results deemed to represent the center declined by 10%.
For years, conservatives and other dissenters from left-wing orthodoxy have criticized the world’s largest online information and communications platforms, including Google, Facebook, and (until late last 2022) Twitter, for using their vast influence to slant the news, sources, ideas, and arguments their users see and share through their services –
sometimes while acting in concert with the U.S. federal government.
Yet despite the scope and persistence of such efforts, various voices ranging from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the United Nations to so-called “tech justice” advocacy groups have called on Big Tech to do even more to manipulate what the public sees online to their liking.
The report gave the internet giant a “Leans Left” rating after examining 494 Google News homepage articles and 480 articles from Google News search results across a two-week period between October and November 2023. It found that 63 percent of the results were from left-wing or left-leaning sources, as opposed to just 6 percent that were right-wing or right-leaning, 16 percent in the political center, and 15 percent that were not given a bias rating.
On Google’s homepage, “the top sources that appeared were CNN (Lean Left), the New York Times (Lean Left), Reuters (Center), Fox News (Right), and Yahoo! News (Lean Left),” the report says. “All of the top 10 sources curated were rated
Lean Left or Left, other than Reuters and Fox News.”
Even more lopsided were the biases of the sources yielded by specific search terms. Seventy-six percent of results for “abortion” were left-wing or leaning, 77 percent for “climate change,” 78 percent for “economy,” and 67 percent for “election.”
The analysis goes on to note that results on the left and right both increased slightly compared with 2022,
and results deemed to represent the center declined by 10%.
For years, conservatives and other dissenters from left-wing orthodoxy have criticized the world’s largest online information and communications platforms, including Google, Facebook, and (until late last 2022) Twitter, for using their vast influence to slant the news, sources, ideas, and arguments their users see and share through their services –
sometimes while acting in concert with the U.S. federal government.
Yet despite the scope and persistence of such efforts, various voices ranging from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the United Nations to so-called “tech justice” advocacy groups have called on Big Tech to do even more to manipulate what the public sees online to their liking.