Donald Trump is making more bold claims without the proper facts to back them, but the nation is hanging on his every word regardless. This time, Trump has chosen to attack Google, and other search engines. As usual, Trump took to Twitter to make his argument. "Google search results for 'Trump News' shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media," he wrote after deleting his original tweet on the matter. "In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal?"
"96% of results on 'Trump News' are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous," he continued, drawing on biased numbers to anchor his argument. "Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!" It is likely that Trump, who has repeatedly used Right-Wing media reports to fuel his statements, is quoting an article from PJ Media. The conservative site published an article that was entitled, "96 Percent of Google Search Results for ‘Trump’ News Are from Liberal Media Outlets.” Far Right-leaning media picked up the story and ran with it.
PJ Media's article did a bit of research first, but Trump's quoted numbers aren't based on factually sound reporting. The outlet searched "Trump" in the "News" section of Google, which may be how Donald got it confused with "Trump News." Searching articles in the News section results in different links than when you search in the standard Google search bar. By searching under only the News tab, PJ Media excluded many links that would have popped up. The proof can be seen when you search a trending topic on Google, and the "News" pieces pop up on top, with the other search result following underneath. PJ Media searched "Trump" on several computers and reported back on the results. They followed a biased chart of news sites that was made by a third party to conclude that right-winged media wasn't getting promoted enough. While outlets such as Fox and Wall Street Journal, which both fall under Right-leaning news on the biased chart, ranked high in the report, PJ Media found that sites such as Breitbart, and The Blaze were underrepresented in search engines.
Google responded to Trump's claims, stating, “When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds. Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology."
(Via)
