Trump tweets spur ‘taking a look’ at Google
The Trump administration is ‘‘taking a look’’ at whether Google and its search engine should be regulated by the government, said Larry Kudlow, President Donald Trump’s economic adviser, yesterday.
The announcement puts the search giant squarely in the White House’s crosshairs amid wider allegations against the tech industry that it systematically discriminates against conservatives on social media and other platforms.
Kudlow’s remark to reporters came hours after Trump fired off a series of predawn tweets complaining about Google search results for ‘‘Trump News.’’
‘‘Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent . . . 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 in his tweets.
Google said its searches were not politically biased: ‘‘When users type queries into the Google Search bar, our goal is to make sure they receive the most relevant answers in a matter of seconds. Search is not used to set a political agenda and we don’t bias our results towards any political ideology.
‘‘We continually work to improve Google Search and we never rank search results to manipulate political sentiment.’’
Trump escalated his attacks on the tech industry yesterday afternoon in response to questions from reporters in the Oval Office, where the president was meeting Gianni Infantino, president of Fifa, soccer’s international governing body.
‘‘I think Google is really taking advantage of a lot of people,’’ Trump said. ‘‘And I think that’s a very serious thing, and it’s a very serious charge. ??? We have literally thousands and thousands of complaints coming in. And you just can’t do that. So I think that Google and Twitter and Facebook, they’re really treading on very, very troubled territory.’’
It was unclear whether the president had Googled himself, or whether he was referring to a recent piece in PJ Media, a conservative blog, alleging that 96 per cent of Google search results for news about Trump were from ‘‘left-leaning news outlets.’’ His accusations appeared to mirror those in the August 25 piece.
‘‘Is Google manipulating its algorithm to prioritise leftleaning news outlets in their coverage of President Trump?’’ asked Paula Bolyard, the ‘‘supervising editor’’ of the site who describes herself on Twitter as a Christian, a constitutional conservative and a ‘‘Cultural nonconformist.’’ She said she searched ‘‘Trump’’ on Google News and weighed the results using a media bias chart developed by a former CBS News correspondent. Bolyard said leftleaning outlets accounted for 96 per cent of the results.
But nowhere did the editor reckon with the fact that the sheer volume of content produced by different outlets plays a major role in determining the share of results they claim. She did, however, acknowledge that her methods were ‘‘not scientific.’’
A search for ‘‘Trump News’’ shortly after the president’s posts returned three top stories. There was a Fox News report about Lanny Davis, an attorney and spokesman for Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, admitting he was an anonymous source for CNN’S report about Trump’s possible prior knowledge of the summer 2016 meeting at Trump Tower attended by a Russian lawyer. There was also a CNN account of Trump’s decision to issue, several days late, a statement praising the late Senator John Mccain. And there was an NBC story about the surge of Muslim candidates inspired to run for office across the country by Trump’s election. – Washington Post