Over the past months, I've found it ever more difficult to dig up conservative material using Google (both its web and news searches.) For example, today, I tried to find reporting on Senator James Inhofe's testimony before the Senate Committee on Public Works and the Environment on the current state of global warming science. Nothing there, other than a bit of polemical Inhofe bashing. I had to go to the Senate's website to find his testimony. (I've copied it into an earlier blog post today.)I'm wondering if Google has set its search algorithm to censor or downgrade the score of conservative publications. I'm not the only worrier: former Reagan advisor and CNBC host Larry Kudlow has wondered about the same thing.
If Google is making it harder to find conservative thought, that is very troubling. Already, our other major sources of information: the schools, the colleges and the media have a decidedly liberal bias.
Wikipedia too seems to have a liberal bias. (FYI, it's the world's largest encyclopedia and the 9th most visited site on the Net.) That bias is particularly strong on racial issues. If additionally, Google searches are liberal-biased, we'll all be hearing overwhelmingly liberal thought.
And while I'm far from an across-the-board conservative, I do not believe that all wisdom resides left of center, and do believe that society is best served by facilitating open access to the full range of responsibly held ideas.
Are you perceiving a liberal or conservative bias in Google searches or in Wikipedia entries?
