President Trump on Tuesday morning accused Google of “suppressing voices of conservatives” and rigging its search engine to amplify liberal media outlets.
“Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media,” Trump wrote. “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 added. “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!”
The “96 percent” claim appears to have originated with an article by PJ Media.
{mosads}The conservative media outlet’s supervising editor, Paula Boylard, reported on Saturday that “96 percent of Google search results for ‘Trump’ news are from liberal media outlets,” based on an analysis she conducted after Googling the president on several different computers.
She labeled media outlets as left- or right-wing based on commentator Sharyl Attkisson’s media bias chart. Attkisson, a contributor to The Hill, is a frequent critic of “fake news” and liberal bias in reporting.
“Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results toward any political ideology,” Google said in a statement.
“Every year, we issue hundreds of improvements to our algorithms to ensure they surface high-quality content in response to users’ queries. We continue work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment,” it added.
Trump has stoked anxieties about discrimination against conservative voices multiple times in recent weeks, claiming at the end of July that he would investigate Twitter for “shadow-banning prominent Republicans,” a claim that has yet to be substantiated.
The president in subsequent tweets early Tuesday also pointed to a record high for NASDAQ and quoted Fox Business’s Lou Dobbs, who said Trump “has done more for minority groups in this country than any president in decades.”
Updated at 11:16 a.m.