Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has been waging war against Google for wanting to improve the quality of its search results by downgrading lies and misinformation in its search results, which the MRC dishonestly portrays as "censorship" (even though by doing so, the MRC also seems to be conceding that right-wing websites are of poor quality). Let's look at how that politically motivated war has been going, shall we? A Feb. 13 post by Catherine Salgado raged that Google still wants to improve search quality:
As Meta expands its prebunking efforts, Google has jumped on the bandwagon with new prebunk ads in Germany.
Google’s “prebunking” test efforts in countries like Poland apparently showed "promising results" and now the company is expanding its efforts to target photos and videos in Germany and India, according to the Associated Press (AP). AP claimed that prebunking so-called misinformation is more effective than direct censorship or fact checks because censorship is naturally slammed and fact checkers are understandably distrusted now.
Google will reportedly expand prebunking through instructive ads, which supposedly made people less likely to believe alleged “misinformation” in a test pilot. The project launches Feb. 13 for Germany and is reportedly in development for India.
Salgado made sure to insert her employer's anti-George Soros propaganda and the MRC's own pet conspiracy theory about the 2020 election:
AP noted that the George Soros-funded Poynter Institute already praised Google’s efforts. Poynter Institute’s MediaWise director Alex Mahadevan enthused about Google’s project, “This is a good news story in what has essentially been a bad news business when it comes to misinformation.” Mahadevan called prebunking a “pretty efficient way to address misinformation at scale.” Radical leftist billionaire Soros’s Open Society Foundations gave Poynter’s International Fact Checking Network $492,000 between 2016 and 2020, as MRC Business noted in its Jan. 2023 report: George Soros: Propaganda Powerhouse.
AP’s list of topics that might trigger the spread of “misinformation” shows both the outlet and Google’s leftist bias: “COVID-19, mass shootings, immigration, climate change or elections.” MRC found Big Tech censorship helped steal the 2020 U.S. election.
Salgado is lying. All the MRC did is buy two polls from highly biased pollsters -- including Donald Trump's campaign pollster -- who supplied the results it paid for. Salgado then huffed: "Users don’t trust social media censors anymore for good reason." Because well-funded right-wing operations like the MRC spend millions of dollars annually lying their fellow right-wingers that fighting lies and misinformation in social media is "censorship"?
In a Feb. 21 post, Autumn Johnson whined that Google exercised its rights and funded a group that spoke out on a political issue:
A group with financial ties to Google is trying to convince the United States Supreme Court to strengthen the company’s liability protections—and censorship powers—under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
Politico reported Friday that “prominent internet influencers and the nonprofit Authors Alliance filed an amicus brief ” in support of Google in Gonzalez v. Google. The groups responsible for the brief have financial ties to leftist Google, according to Politico:
[...]
While Google did not respond to the online publication’s multiple requests for comment, Ben Berkowitz, an attorney for Authors Alliance, insisted that none of the signatories were paid by Google to sign the brief, according to the report. Berkowitz also claimed that Google and its affiliates in no way contributed funding to the brief.
Johnson didn't explain why Google is apparently not allowed to do this. But she did write some more about the Supreme Court case two days later after arguments were presented in court. When the case was decided in Google's favor in May, Salgado was sad oveall but cheered that the ruling was so narrow that that it didn't address Section 230 concerns, which she declared to be "unexpected good news for free speech advocates."
The MRC also conducted another one of its dubious "search bias" studies -- but this time about itself -- detailed in an April 27 post by Luis Cornelio headlined "IT'S PERSONAL":
Big Tech giant Google has taken to suppressing MRC Free Speech America in an apparent vendetta to punish the Media Research Center division for its work exposing its explicit anti-conservative bias and censorship.
MRC Free Speech America analyzed Google search results for “mrc free speech america” and found scathing evidence of Google’s censorship against the organization. “It looks like there aren’t many great results for this search,” Google warned at the top of the first page of search results. “The results below match your search terms, but some of them may not have reliable information on this topic.” The warning appears to be an attempt to dissuade users from the organization's sites and thwart its reach, page engagement and interactions.
Cornelio went on to huff:
MRC researchers made a clean environment search on April 14, 2023, for leftist outlets BuzzFeed, Mother Jones, and Jacobin — all of which have presented unreliable information on their sites. MRC publishes reliable content, while BuzzFeed and Mother Jones still have published on their sites the discredited Steele Dossier. Meanwhile, Jacobin ’s Marxist writings call for the destruction of America’s economic and political systems. Unsurprisingly, Google did not warn or alert users as to reliability concerns for these leftist outlets.
We've repeatedly documented the MRC puiblishing unreliable information. And as we've noted, BuzzFeed never claimed the Steele dossier was accurate. Cornelio also documents no specific evidence of "unreliable" information at Mother Jones beyond more Steele dossier allusions and complaining that Jacobin supports the idea of socialism (which should not be a suprise to anyone).
Further, it's interesting that Cornelio is positioning the MRC as being as far-right as Mother Jones and Jacobin are "leftist." By ranting that Google's purported suppression of Free Speech America is "personal," it could very well be that Google deprecates search results for all partisan organizations, not just the MRC. Then again, given all the hate and slander the MRC has hurled Google's way over the past few years, Google would be entirely justified in making things personal.
