On Tuesday, The Daily Caller reported that Google had begun to target conservative media sites. Their preferred method: by showing fact-checks of those sites by particular left-wing media fact-checking sites like FactCheck.org, Politifact, and Climate Feedback. Such fact-checks were not provided for major left-wing media sites.
Here, for example, is the screencap of the search for Daily Wire:
[[{“fid”:”28894″,”view_mode”:”default”,”fields”:{“format”:”default”,”field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]”:false,”field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]”:false},”type”:”media”,”field_deltas”:{“1”:{“format”:”default”,”field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]”:false,”field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]”:false}},”attributes”:{“class”:”media-element file-default”,”data-delta”:”1″}}]]
And here is the screencap of the search for Vox.com:
[[{“fid”:”28895″,”view_mode”:”default”,”fields”:{“format”:”default”,”field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]”:false,”field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]”:false},”type”:”media”,”field_deltas”:{“2”:{“format”:”default”,”field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]”:false,”field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]”:false}},”attributes”:{“class”:”media-element file-default”,”data-delta”:”2″}}]]
Only sites like Daily Caller, Daily Wire, The Federalist and Breitbart News are targeted; ThinkProgress, Slate, The Huffington Post, and similar avatars of left-wing viewpoint are only granted a “Topics they write about” category.
Suffice it to say that the use of left-wing fact-checkers as truth police is a massive step in favor of media bias, not against it. As Aaron Bandler of Daily Wire has written:
The problem is that these fact-checkers — PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Snopes, Associated Press and ABC News — are all slanted to the left and have a bad habit of inserting their progressive opinions into “fact-checks” instead of simply being objective.
For example, Google shows a result from Snopes.com with regard to a Daily Wire story about Barack Obama praising Jay-Z while remaining publicly silent on the Congressional baseball shooting. Snopes.com suggests that the story was false, because Obama privately called Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) — an exchange reported only by Flake, not Obama. But the entire premise of the story was that Obama had remained publicly quiet on the shooting.
Or, for example, Daily Wire’s story on race-based shootings in the United States. We reported — correctly — that police kill more white people than black people. Snopes.com ranked that claim “mixed.”
Google already has a lawsuit pending from former employee James Damore over their leftism. If they wish to fully alienate conservatives, they’re pursuing that strategy beautifully.