Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Google runs the risk of facing congressional hearings over searches which have pulled up anti-Republican results.
He said the tech giant has an “obligation” to put in place a system to clean up biased search results “within a couple of hours” during an interview on “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo.”
Otherwise, Gingrich said “they run a risk that they’re going to start getting hearings if in fact this is used as an engine of left-wing propaganda people are going to demand I think real reform.”
Conservatives blasted Google last week after search showed the word “Nazism” in an information box about the California Republican Party’s ideology. Further exacerbating the issue, a separate search for Trudy Wade, a North Carolina state senator who is a Republican and a supporter of President Trump, pulled up a picture Friday with the word “BIGOT” in red.
Google apologized for the offending search results, pinning the blame on search results that are automatically populated by sites across the Internet. Google said it sped up the process of removing the “erroneous information” about the California GOP, and in Wade’s case, the company encouraged individuals who are featured in a “Knowledge Panel to get verified to select their own image, which can help prevent this in the future.”
Prior to Gingrich’s interview, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said on the program that Republicans in Congress would pursue testimony from Google if the apparent bias against conservatives continues.
“I would hope that they just don’t get involved in politics and don’t censor conservatives and Republicans, but if they continue to do it then we have to move obviously to hearings on these issues,” he said.
