Does Google Have a
Liberal Bias? Search Results for Roger Ailes Speak Volumes
By Ian Miles Cheong
The former Chairman and CEO of Fox News, Roger Ailes, has passed. He was
arguably one of the most consequential individuals in media and politics
in the last century, and he leaves behind a loving wife and son. He also
leaves behind a cadre of loyal former employees who love and respect
him.
But if you run a Google search on him, you’ll find that the top results
consist almost entirely of articles from several liberal
publications savaging his reputation as a person. The search results
— both on mobile and desktop platforms — begin with entries
that are strikingly cruel and meanspirited — and raise
new questions about Google’s objectivity.
The top results on “Roger Ailes” include a piece by leftist activist
Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone declaring Ailes
“one of the worst Americans ever,” an article by NBC’s Joy Reid on Time stating that Ailes “built a kingdom on
exploited bias,” and a Bret Stephens op-ed in the New
York Times, that calls him “the man who wrecked conservatism.” An
op-ed on The Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi
condemning Ailes for helping to “create this nightmare world” shows up
alongside the other articles savaging him, way above obituaries or any
neutral pieces about the man.
The New York Times’ (surprisingly) more balanced
article about Ailes’ life achievements,
published shortly after his passing yesterday, is buried beneath the
rest. You’d have to dig deep to look for any unbiased articles about
Ailes, much less articles written in praise of his
accomplishments as a political genius and the founder of Fox News,
one of the most successful cable networks in history.
Regardless the opinion anyone might hold about Roger Ailes, the only
thing certain is that Google’s search algorithm is deeply biased in
favor of publications who oppose his role as a leader in the
conservative movement. To play on Roger Ailes’ mischievously
brilliant slogan for Fox News, Google’s search results are neither
fair nor balanced.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media
critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and
on Facebook.
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By Tony Cartalucci
Nations are beginning to take more seriously the control of their
respective information space after years of allowing US-based tech
giants Google and Facebook to monopolize and exploit them.
Vietnam, according to a recent GeekTime
article, is the latest nation to begin encouraging local alternatives to
the search engine and social media network in order to rebalance the
monopoly over information both tech giants enjoy in the Southeast Asian
country today.
Google and Facebook: More than Search Engines and Social
Media
The two tech giants and others like them may have appeared at their
inceptions to political, business, and military leaders around the world
as merely opportunistic corporations seeking profits and expansion.
However, Google and Facebook, among others, have become clearly much
more than that.
Both have verifiably worked with the US State Department in pursuit of
geopolitical objectives around the world, from the collapse of the
Libyan government to attempts at regime change in Syria, and using
social media and information technology around the world to manipulate
public perception and achieve sociopolitical goals on behalf of Wall
Street and Washington for years.
The use of social media to control a targeted nation’s information
space, and use it as a means of carrying out sociopolitical subversion
and even regime change reached its pinnacle in 2011 during the
US-engineered “Arab Spring.”
Portrayed at first as spontaneous demonstrations organized organically
over Facebook and other social media platforms, it is now revealed in
articles like the New York Times‘, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,”
that the US government had trained activists years ahead of the
protests, with Google and Facebook participating directly in making
preparations.
Opposition fronts funded and supported by the US State Department’s
National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiaries Freedom
House, International Republican Institute (IRI), and National Democratic
Institute (NDI) were invited to several summits where executives and
technical support teams from Google and Facebook provided them with the
game plans they would execute in 2011 in coordination with US and
European media who also attended the summits.
The end result was the virtual weaponization of social media, serving as
cover for what was a long-planned, regional series of coups including
heavily armed militants who eventually overthrew the governments of
Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, with Syria now locked in 6 years of
war as a result.
It was during Syria’s ongoing conflict that Google would find itself
involved again. The Guardian in a 2012 article titled, “Syria: is it possible to rename
streets on Google Maps?,” would report:
In their struggle to free Syria from the clutches of President
Bashar al-Assad, anti-government activists have embarked on a project to
wipe him off the map. Literally. On Google Maps, major Damascus
thoroughfares named after the Assad family have appeared renamed after
heroes of the uprising. The Arab Spring has form in this regard. When
anti-Gadaffi rebels tore into Tripoli last August, the name of the
city’s main square on the mapping service changed overnight – from
“Green Square”, the name given to it by the erstwhile dictator, to
“Martyr’s Square”, its former title.
The internet giant’s mapping service has a history of weighing in on
political disputes.
Google’s monopoly in nations without local alternatives ensures that
public perception is lopsidedly influenced by these deceptive methods.
The Independent in a 2016 article titled, “Google planned to help Syrian
rebels bring down Assad regime, leaked Hillary Clinton emails
claim,” would expand on Google’s
activities regarding Syria:
An interactive tool created by Google was designed to encourage Syrian
rebels and help bring down the Assad regime, Hillary Clinton’s leaked
emails have reportedly revealed.
By tracking and mapping defections within the Syrian leadership, it was
reportedly designed to encourage more people to defect and ‘give
confidence’ to the rebel opposition.
Clearly, more is going on at Google than Internet searches.
Nations would be equally irresponsible to allow a foreign corporation to
exercise control over their respective information space – especially in
light of verified, documented abuses – as they would by allowing foreign
corporations to exercise control over other essential aspects of
national infrastructure.
Vietnam Taking Control of its Information Space
The GeekTime article, shared by the US State
Department’s NDI on Twitter titled, “Is Vietnamese campaign to build
a Facebook alternative fighting fake news, or fostering
censorship?,” claims (emphasis added):
During a parliamentary committee meeting earlier this month, Truong Minh
Tuan, Minister of Information and Communications in Vietnam, said
that the government is encouraging Vietnamese tech companies to
build local replacements for platforms such as Facebook and Google (which
are the most popular in their categories in Vietnam).
The article also reported:
It is part of a wider campaign to “strengthen cyber security” and the
integrity of the country’s information. “The plan is to try and address
the problem of how ‘fake pages’ with anti-government content grew
uncontrollably on Facebook,” said Tuan. “Going further, we need
social networks provided by local businesses that can replace and
compete with Facebook in Vietnam.”
NDI’s mention of the article is meant to imply that the Vietnamese
government stands to profit from the localization of search engines and
social media – and it does. However, the localization of Vietnam’s
information space is no different than the localization of Vietnam’s
defense industry, energy and water infrastructure, schools, and
healthcare institutions. They are the Vietnamese people’s to control,
not Washington, Wall Street, or Silicon Valley’s.
Whether the Vietnamese government abuses that localization or not is the
business of the Vietnamese people. The actual concern NDI has is that
once the localization of information technology is complete in Vietnam,
forever will these effective vectors of sociopolitical subversion be
closed to the corporate-financier special interests driving US foreign
policy and the work of fronts like NDI.
Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer,
especially for the online magazine “New Eastern
Outlook”., where this article first appeared.
