Google AI’s Bias Couldn’t Be More Clear in Answers on NPR, PBS
3rd April 2025
Are NPR and PBS biased? Should they receive taxpayer funding? Don’t ask Google. The company’s AI chatbot showed its bias when it answered by simply pushing the leftist legacy media outlets in question.
Google showed a clear bias when MRC researchers asked “Are NPR and PBS biased?” and “Should NPR and PBS be defunded?” on March 25 and April 1. In its answers to the two prompts, Gemini cited NPR, PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which both NPR and PBS are funded by in part) as sources nearly 59 percent of the time (a combined total of 17 times out of 29 sources listed). Gemini’s responses included only six links that did not favor taxpayer-funded public media like PBS or NPR. This is a continuation of a similar tactic used by Gemini last week, the day before NPR and PBS executives were brought before members of Congress to answer for their networks’ biased reporting. Neither prompt cited a single article by the Media Research Center, which has produced countless reports on the bias at NPR and PBS over the last 30+ years.
“When it comes to NPR and PBS, Google’s bias could not be more clear here,” said NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham. “Aside from perhaps NPR itself, no media entity has expended more ink over the decades on the question of NPR and PBS’s bias than the Media Research Center, and yet, at no point did Google even deign to mention the MRC as a source for either prompt. But this is just Google’s usual modus operandi, isn’t it?”