On Thursday, Fox News and Google will host a Republican presidential debate in Florida. In a press release announcing the event, Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente said “we are proud to partner with a leader in global technology.”
For regular Fox News viewers, though, the partnership may seem like a case of strange political bedfellows since its hosts have accused the company of political and ideological bias.
Moderator Chris Wallace defended the debate pairing while speaking on Mike Gallagher's conservative radio program. After Wallace touted Google's credentials, Gallagher -- who is also a Fox News contributor -- accused the company of being “radical, crazy left-wingers. ... It's true, they give money to Obama.”
“First of all, that doesn't make them radical and crazy left-wingers,” Wallace responded. “And secondly, we're not getting their political views, we're getting the information of people -- I mean, do you ever go to Google?”
“I go to Google all the time,” Gallagher replied.
“I know, I do too,” Wallace said.
But regular Fox News viewers may think that Googling has serious consequences. In February, Glenn Beck cautioned on his now defunct Fox News program: “May I recommend if you're doing your own homework, don't do a Google search. It seems to me that Google is pretty deeply in bed with the government. Remember, maybe this is explaining why Google is being kicked out of all the other countries. Are they just a shill now for the United States government?”
Days later, Beck listed numerous reasons why you should be “wary” of Google, including that it's “working hard to bring net neutrality”; former Google CEO and current executive chairman Eric Schmidt “is on the White House council for science and technology”; and Google is “working way too close with hard-core leftists.” Beck has also bizarrely suggested that Google was colluding with the government to establish an socialist-Islamic “caliphate” to take over the world.
Criticism against Google for alleged bias has come from other Fox News hosts as well.
Last year, hosts for Fox & Friends expressed outrage that Google was “ignoring” Good Friday when it featured a custom doodle commemorating Hans Christian Andersen's 205th birthday but not Jesus' crucifixion. (Google regularly chooses not to use religious imagery in its doodles, and one of its founders, Sergey Brin, left the Soviet Union because his family was persecuted for being Jewish.)
“This is crazy,” co-host Gretchen Carlson said of Google's snub.
Steve Doocy further complained that Google was ignoring Ash Wednesday, Christmas, and Easter: “No bunny, no Jesus, no nothing.”
In a segment last month, Fox & Friends' Brian Kilmeade responded to a story about Google altering its non-profit program to prohibit the eligibility of “Places or institutions of worship (e.g., churches, ministries, temples, synagogues)” by asking, “What's their beef with God?” (Christianity Today reported that “corporations often exclude faith-based groups from their philanthropic programs or restrict who can qualify, said Lloyd Mayer, a professor at Notre Dame Law School” because they want to avoid any potentially polarizing causes.)
In 2007, CNN partnered with YouTube -- which is owned by Google -- for a Republican presidential debate. CNN and Google drew criticism from then-Fox News host John Gibson for purportedly attempting to “embarrass the Republican candidates” by failing to adequately vet the political backgrounds of questioners.
“This is why the GOP field should have refused this debate long ago and why I presume they will never ever do one again. Fortunately, the biggest embarrassment was to CNN, Anderson Cooper and Google. Let's hope the GOP elephants have long memories,” concluded Gibson, who now hosts a Fox News Radio program.
In 2007, Fox News also ran stories suggesting Google made decisions based on political ideology when it rejected an ad for Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) which was critical of MoveOn.org. Brit Hume reported on Special Report that Google said the ads “were removed because they violated the company's trademark policy by naming MoveOn” and added: “But Google routinely allows the unauthorized use of company names such as Wal-Mart and Exxon in advocacy ads. One lawyer who is an expert on intellectual property issues notes there is no legal basis for Google's trademark policy -- and that it appears to be practicing selective enforcement of its own rules.”
John Gibson, meanwhile, tied the Google-Collins story to Google adviser Al Gore: “It's Al Gore's Google in this situation and Al Gore is more interested in MoveOn getting its anti-Bush, anti-war message out there than helping a Republican fight the Soros MoveOn machine to hold onto to her Senate seat.”
Google has also come under attack from Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox News parent company News Corp. Earlier this year, Murdoch claimed that by aggregating its news content, Google is “steal[ing] all our copyrights” and “steal[ing] our stories.”
In a September 2008 interview, then-CEO of Google Eric Schmidt -- who endorsed Obama -- told Neil Cavuto that the “company is completely non-partisan” and “most of the technology people that I know tend to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative.”
Politico's Mike Zapler wrote this morning that while Google embraced Obama in 2008, the company is now under scrutiny by “Democrats and Republicans alike about whether the company is abusing its position as the world's primary gateway to information on the Web.” Politico adds that in a climate where Obama's “fortunes have faded, Google's eyes have wandered”:
But as Obama's fortunes have faded, Google's eyes have wandered.
The company's rightward shift this year has been unmistakable. Among its many recent GOP hires is a lobbying firm led by Kyle Simmons, former chief of staff to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Rob Saliterman, a former spokesman for President George W. Bush."
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In addition to the GOP hiring spree, Google has joined Republican organizations in Washington such as the Ripon Institute, said Ralph Hellmann, a tech lobbyist with the Information Technology Industry Council. And Schmidt himself will travel to Florida in time to attend Thursday night's Fox News-Google GOP debate.