Media Researcher Says Google's Alleged Bias Against Conservatives Should be 'Terrifying' to Everyone

President Donald Trump is blasting Google and social media platforms for "suppressing" conservative news outlets and viewpoints.

He voiced his concerns on Twitter Tuesday.

"Google search results for 'Trump News' shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. 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. 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!" Trump wrote.

Google search results for "Trump News" shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. 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....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

....results on "Trump News" are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous. 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!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018

The president was responding to a report by PJ Media which suggests that Google is "manipulating its algorithm to prioritize liberal news outlets in their coverage of President Trump."

According to the report, when looking for Trump news in Google's search engine, nearly all of the first 100 articles are from left-leaning news sources.

"Not a single right-leaning site appeared on the first page of search results," said Paula Bolyard, who published the report. "But it got much, much worse when I analyzed the first 100 items that Google returned in a search for news on 'Trump.' CNN, by a wide margin, appeared most frequently, with nearly twice as many results returned as the second-place finisher, The Washington Post. Other left-leaning outlets also fared well, including NBC, CNBC, The Atlantic, and Politico. The only right-leaning sites to appear in the top 100 were The Wall Street Journal and Fox News with 3 and 2 results respectively."

Google denied any bias, saying it would "never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment."

Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture at the Media Research Center, disagrees.

"The problem you've got is not just the search results. Google, for instance, works with Wikipedia. So, it ends up publishing absolutely incorrect information," he told CBN News. "There's a whole series of problems these social media companies have."

Gainor said the liberal bias of the social media company employees affects conservatives online. He cited examples of the shadow-banning and demonetization of right-leaning voices.

"What you've got is in all these organizations, the lower level people are across the board pulled from the Silicon Valley. So you've got often times, the organizations themselves enacting liberal policies, particularly their hate speech strategies, but then the enforcement of those strategies is done by an overwhelmingly liberal workforce," he explained. "It's this black box ideology. They don't want to tell you what they're doing. They don't want to show you how they're doing it because they're afraid people will game the system. So, what ends up is we don't know whether to trust them or not."

Gainor believes the bias online could have an impact on the November elections.

"It should be terrifying to everybody who's liberal or conservative or moderate because these companies have the ability to impact the election not just on the margins, but really into the mainstream, because if you are not finding the news or information or getting the opinions that you want – if it's been skewed or selected – well then that could affect the whole election.”