The Media Research Center (MRC) is calling on the tech giant, Google, to stop strangling democracy by editing out conservative content. In a study conducted by MRC, they discovered that the tech giant seems to only block Republicans and conservative content.
The Strive Asset Management executive chairman unleashed on Google during the Oct. 26 edition of Fox Business Tonight: “We hear a lot about the threats to our democracy.
Well, guess what! I think this is a big threat to our democracy,” he said. To give “one autocratic actor the chance to tilt the scales of what the public can and cannot see about the candidates that they’re asked to vote for in November” is a “threat to democracy.”
The MRC found that Google buried 10 of 12 Senate Republican Party candidates’ campaign websites and highlighted their opponent’s campaign sites in organic search results. It’s worth noting that Google controls 92 percent of the search engine market share.
Ramaswamy went a step further and even speculated that Google may have violated campaign finance laws:
“I personally think that there are grounds to even look at this as a campaign finance violation if you quantify the amount of value given to a candidate as an in-kind contribution for manipulating search results.”
The MRC is calling on Google to “stop its war on democracy” and “provide algorithmic transparency” after the media watchdog’s Free Speech America initiative analyzed the 12 races identified by Real Clear Politics as important to watch.
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The findings revealed that campaign websites for 10 Republicans among the 12 tight races were found significantly lower on results pages compared to their opponent’s sites among organic search results.
Seven Republican candidate’s websites were completely hidden from the first page of Google search results, according to the MRC. While Republicans were hidden, eight Democratic candidates had websites that were promoted within the first six results on Google.
“Google’s bias is undeniable when shown in comparison to other search engines. Bing and DuckDuckGo both show, with on exception, all 12 Democrat and Republican senate candidate’s websites within the top five organic search results,” the Media Research Center said.
“The Media Research Center is calling upon Google to stop its war on democracy. To regain the trust of conservatives it must provide algorithmic transparency to show that liberal groups and candidates are treated the same way as conservatives,” the MRC continued. “MRC is also calling upon members of Congress to take action protecting American’s free speech liberties. Congress should investigate Google’s search bias and its results on the midterm elections.”
Erica Carlin is an independent journalist, opinion writer and contributor to several news and opinion sources. She is based in Georgia.
