Newsweek’s geniuses tried to give a lifeline to the leftists at Google by publishing a ridiculous “fact-check” of MRC Free Speech America’s latest study that showed Google manipulating search results in order to benefit Democrats in top senate race.
Brent Bozell, President of MRC, responded to Newsweek with a simple statement: “Remember Newsweek sold for a dollar.” Someone was overpaid.”
Newsweek’s “fact check” stated that the MRC study which found Google burying 10 of the 12 Senate Republican Party candidates’ websites while highlighting their opponents’ campaign sites in search results “doesn’t provide any definitive evidence to indicate that Google intentionally alters their algorithm for partisan effects.”
The outlet did not contact the Media Research Center to comment and chose to ignore core elements of the study that would have rewritten Newsweek’s lazy work.
Bozell criticized Newsweek and Google’s sexism: “Google’s response to our study and Newsweek’s attack against it are predictable for Google. Newsweek is also predictable.”
Newsweek had quoted a Google spokesperson as saying that the MRC Free Speech America report was “designed to mislead, test uncommon search terms that people seldom use.”
What is the so-called fact check’s “ruling”? Newsweek claimed that “Unverified” is Newsweek’s “ruling”, which is a clever way to say it isn’t a fact-check. Based on a source it cited, the outlet even admitted that Google is well-known for its “lackof transparency” regarding its algorithm.
Newsweek did not mention that the MRC Free Speech America study used the same parameters to search on DuckDuckGo and Bing. The results of the same searches made by MRC Free Speech America researchers on these search engines were more neutral.
Bozell continued to slam Newsweek and Google. “If DuckDuckGo can get it right then the self-proclaimed Google experts should be able too. Ironically, Newsweek supports our case. It is true. We don’t know why these results are so skewed, but that’s not the point. It is due to Google’s lack transparency. The results are accurate. They are free to explain why they came to be the way they are.
Newsweek complained that the study didn’t account for “a number of key variables” such as location, device used, and search history.
The MRC did indeed account for user search history in the study. Newsweek would have known if they had read the study. The Methodology, which is clearly described in the executive summary as well as at the end of this study, clearly states that MRC Free Speech America researchers “created a method to automate the process in a clean environment.” The ‘clean environment’ allows organic search to populate the results without the influence from prior search history or tracking cookies.
MRC Free Speech America reached Andrew Stanton, Newsweek Weekend Staff Writer, for comment. However, no response was received as of publication.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Newsweek to demand that it retracts its fake non-fact-check.
