Google's left-leaning media bias revealed: Academic study exposes how search engine massively over-promotes results from liberal news websites over right
Stories from only 20 media outlets were featured in Google's Top Stories box in November 2017
62 percent of those outlets were considered to be left-leaning media sources
CNN accounted for 10 percent of the news promoted, The New York Times made up 6.5 percent and The Washington Post accounted for 5.6 percent
By contrast, Fox stories made up only three percent of the 6,302 articles
Google uses an algorithm to decide what goes in its Top Stories box
It is based largely on the popularity of a topic or of a viewpoint
The search engine has denied that it deliberately promotes left-leaning sites
It now has unprecedented power over what is promoted and how much traffic it sends to sites given Facebook's recent scale back on news
Google's bias towards left-wing media outlets has been laid bare by an algorithm which detected that it favors sites including CNN and The New York Times over others.
According to data compiled by researchers from Northwestern University, the search engine promoted those sites over others repeatedly in November 2017.
Of the 6,302 articles that appeared in Google's 'top stories' page that month after a term was searched, more than 10 percent were by CNN.
The New York Times was the second most favored and accounted for 6.5 percent of articles. The Washington Post was third with 5.6 percent.
Nearly all (86 percent) of the stories came from just 20 sources and of them, 62 percent were considered to be left-leaning.
The research sheds new light on the unprecedented power the search engine has in influencing the external traffic to news sites, a hot topic in the worlds of media and politics given Facebook's recently reduced output
For example, the researchers found that CNN got a 24 percent bump in traffic as a result of having its stories featured in the 'Top Stories' box.
The most featured sources, in order, were CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox News, BBC, USA Today, LA Times, The Guardian, Politico, ABC News, CBS News, NPR, NBC News, CNBC, Reuters, Huffington Post, The Verge, Al Jazeera, The Hill and People.
For some stories there was a shortage of sources but a search for Rex Tillerson, the former Secretary of State, turfed up stories from 38 sources.
Despite the plethora of sources, 75 percent of the promoted stories about Tillerson came from The New York Times and CNN, the researchers found
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7020081/Googles-left-wing-media-bias-CNN-New-York-Times-Washington-Post-favorites.html