Are Google and Facebook really suppressing conservative politics?

Accusations of encoded anti-conservative prejudice are gaining traction, but experts say the claims are just a red herring

In August, Paula Bolyard, a supervising editor at the conservative news outlet PJ Media, published a story reporting that 96% of Google search results for Donald Trump prioritized "left-leaning and anti-Trump media outlets".

Bolyard's results were generated according to her own admittedly unscientific methodology. She searched for "Trump" in Google's News tab, and then used a highly questionable media chart that separated outlets into "left" and "right" to tabulate the results. She reported that 96 of 100 results returned were from so-called "left-leaning" news outlets, with 21 of those from CNN alone. Despite this dubious methodology, Bolyard's statistic spread, and her story was picked up by a Fox Business Network show.