EXCLUSIVE: 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.
MRC’s Findings:
- Google News skewed coverage by promoting left-leaning outlets 70.3% of the time, out of all stories, while limiting right-leaning sources to just 1.3%, resulting in a ratio of 52 left-leaning stories for every one right-leaning story.
- The tech giant overwhelmingly boosted leftist, elitist media outlets like The New York Times (59), CNN (38), The Washington Post (27), NPR (25), The Guardian (23), NBC News (20) and ABC News (19).
- Across the entire month, Google News featured just seven right-leaning stories, comprising five from Fox News, one from the New York Post and one from The Washington Times.
The Data, Explained:
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.
Why This Matters:
Google News plays a central role in how Americans consume information. Pre-downloaded onto smartphones and given a tab among search results, the app serves as a default news feed for millions of users. That makes December’s findings especially troubling.
Google News’s pattern of anti-conservative bias is not new. A previous MRC report found that Google News virtually ignored the massive Minnesota fraud scandal, covering just four stories out of 840 promoted over six weeks.
As detailed by MRC earlier this month:
Google News, a digital gatekeeper that shapes what millions of Americans see each day, kept its readers in the dark as the Minnesota fraud scandal intensified, publishing just four stories on the matter out of 840 in its top 20 morning editions from Nov. 28 to Jan. 9.
The scandal gained national attention in November amid reporting that a group of Somali Americans exploited a COVID-19 relief program and later became linked to broader child care fraud allegations in Minnesota.
Google News’s near blackout of the Minnesota fraud scandal is stunning, given its magnitude and political consequences, especially after Walz abruptly suspended his re-election campaign despite repeatedly signaling his intention to seek a third term.
A separate MRC study also uncovered how Google News and the other Big Four News Apps (Apple News, MSN and Yahoo News) played a role in promoting a highly one-sided narrative around the Minneapolis ICE shooting in early January, despite conflicting accounts of what occurred and legitimate opposing arguments about the sequence of events.
MRC also uncovered Google News’s selective coverage in November, when the digital gatekeeper did not include any stories on the Minnesota fraud scandal that implicated Gov. Tim Walz, even after the leftist New York Times acknowledged the story.
Google News also did not surface reporting on the indictment of Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick on allegations she unlawfully kept FEMA COVID-19 funds when that story first emerged in November.
The digital gatekeeper also ignored stories on the Jeffrey Epstein scandals involving House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI), despite widespread public attention to those developments.
Methodology: From Dec. 1 through Dec. 31, MRC researchers reviewed the top 20 AllSides-rated news stories featured on Google News each day at approximately 10:00 a.m. ET. Using AllSides media bias ratings, which classify outlets as “left,” “lean left,” “center,” “lean right” or “right,” researchers assessed the ideological slant presented by Google News and analyzed the results. For clarity, MRC combined the “left” and “lean left” categories, as well as the “lean right” and “right” groupings. MRC did not collect or analyze Google News data on Dec. 2.
