Google News and Blog Posts

As we broke this national news story, our team members were debating it and misconceptions were running rampant.

AllSides has issued an open letter to Google calling on the company to address the misleading Kamala Harris campaign ads on Google.

Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign is misrepresenting the content of news articles in Google search results as part of a new advertising effort, falsely implying the news outlets have issued direct advocacy for her candidacy, an AllSides investigation found.

Social media users are accusing Google of election interference, pointing out that its search box’s Autocomplete function appeared to omit queries regarding the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump. The AllSides staff conducted an analysis that appeared to verify the claim.

Since 2022, AllSides has been auditing major news aggregators for bias, including Google News, Bing News, Apple News, and Yahoo! News — and has found the majority of news aggregators analyzed have a bias on the left.

Last week, AllSides published its 2023 Google News bias analysis which found the the aggregator skews significantly in favor of sources on the left, particularly those with a Lean Left rating. The study was widely viewed on X, and written about by several media outlets, mostly from the right.

Google has a long history of media bias and favoring media outlets and views on the left. Here’s a look at the timeline of Google’s bias.

The 2023 analysis looked at 974 articles that appeared over a 2-week period in October and November.

Google’s new features can help provide users with a more balanced, well-informed perspective — if done right. If applied without balance, they also have the potential to push people further into filter bubbles.

The 2022 AllSides Google News Bias Analysis found 61% of media outlets presented on Google News’ homepage over a 5-day period were from sources AllSides rates as on the left, with just 3% from outlets on the right.