Google Accused Of Liberal Bias
A conservative group is accusing Google of having a liberal political bias after it rejected an anti-Democrat ad that was identical to an anti-Republican one they had already accepted.
William Greene, president of RightMarch.com, says that after seeing several ads attacking Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, he submitted a counter-ad attacking his Democratic counterpart, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. What was unique is that he says all he did was take the anti-DeLay ad and change the name to Pelosi’s, as well as changing the link to his site. Google rejected his ad, while keeping the other ad with the same text, which he charges was done intentionally due to a liberal bias on Google’s part.
RightMarch has screenshots of the incident. In the first one, you see the original anti-DeLay ad in the Google results for Tom Delay:
The Truth about Tom DeLay
Learn about DeLay’s many scandals
and help us clean up the House!
dccc.org
The second screenshot shows AdWords rejecting the anti-Pelosi ad:
Truth about Nancy Pelosi
Learn about Pelosi’s many scandals
and help us clean up the House!
RightMarch.com
It is worth noting that the results for Tom DeLay no longer contain the specific anti-DeLay ad, but some others that are less specifically anti-DeLay:
Help Us Defeat DeLay
Give to DeLay's oldest foe.
Help Texas Democrats beat DeLay!
www.txdemocrats.org
Don't delay Oust DeLay
Save Democracy Speak Out
Original T-Shirts Wild Funny
www.1stamendhab.com
The top ad there is currently owned by RightMarch, with a new twist:
Support Tom DeLay
Stop the vast left-wing conspiracy
Fight Liberal personal attacks.
RightMarch.com
So, was this intentional? Google says that this is simply a case of them catching one ad but not the other, and that it has removed both ads. Google probably should stay out of regulating political speech in its ad network, since this can only backfire against them.
Some quotes from the CNSNews article:
“At this time, Google policy does not permit ad text that advocates against an individual, group or organization,” Google wrote Greene on the administration page of his ad account. “As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site.”“Well, that’s great! They’re a private organization, they can certainly make that decision” Greene said. “But then we looked, and all the anti-DeLay ads were still up, including the one we had copied word-for-word except that we changed the name.”
Asked about the nearly identical ads, Mayzel said, “Both ads were taken down. Any assertion to the contrary is false.”
Other anti-DeLay advertisements that were accepted by Google including, “Help Us Defeat DeLay,” “Don’t delay, Oust DeLay,” “Tom DeLay’s Rear End” and “tom delay [sic] a republican [sic] showing his true colors,” among several others. Only two ads that could be construed as not negative toward DeLay were displayed: One for a “Great Conservative Book - Eyes Wide Open: What Liberals Don’t Want You to Know About America!” and another exhorting viewers to, “Pray for Tom DeLay.”
“If you’ve got a written policy, all we’re asking is that you apply it even-handedly or don’t have the policy,” Greene concluded.
That is absurd. I run a very popular Liberal site and Google has rejected many of my anti-republican (and anti-bush) ads.
Comment by Liberal | October 30, 2005