Google’s flagship news platform indexes content produced by three Chinese state-run outlets that have been accused of disseminating propaganda on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party, including downplaying the Uyghur genocide and attempting to sow dissent among U.S. citizens.
Google News provides a nearly unending stream of articles published by the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the CCP, and China Global Television Network, a Washington Examiner review has found. Both outlets have been flagged by the Justice Department as foreign missions of the CCP working to advance China’s interests by exerting influence in the United States. Additionally, the platform presents readers with articles from China Daily, an outlet run by the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP.
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Google’s continued decision to index content from these outlets could raise eyebrows, as the tech conglomerate moved in 2022 to ban content from Russian state media, showing that there is precedent for blocking adversarial state-run news.
Not only does Google make these stories available on its news platform, but it actively promotes them to U.S. readers.
On Friday, the author of this piece accessed the Google News dashboard without entering any prompts, scrolled down for a few seconds, and was recommended an article published by CGTN criticizing U.S. tariff policies.
“Google actively works to combat coordinated influence and censorship operations while also protecting access to information and free expression online,” a Google spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “Google Search and News do not host content, but rather index hundreds of billions of pages globally. Google News does not allow sources that misrepresent themselves with regard to their ownership and while searching the name of a website can surface that organization’s content, it does not mean an organization’s content is ranking highly.”
CGTN has maintained that it has editorial independence, however, the British government determined in 2021 that it was effectively controlled by the CCP.
The angle of the CGTN article is in line with the strategies the state-run media conglomerate has been alleged to employ to advance the CCP’s interests.
According to a 2022 academic paper published by scholars at King’s College in London, CGTN seeks to produce content that portrays the U.S. as “poorly governed, plutocratic, racist, and a destabilizing international influence” in contrast to a China that is “well governed, benign, stable, and a rising superpower.” In this vein, the article Google News recommended to this piece’s author is critical of U.S. metal tariffs, reporting that they could increase the costs of common home appliances.
In addition to authoring stories critical of the West, CGTN has also paid to promote articles aimed at denying human rights abuses perpetrated by the CCP. A 2021 Press Gazette investigation found that CGTN paid Meta to promote its stories on Facebook that portrayed the involuntary internment of minorities in Western China as “vocational training centers” and accused Westerners of lying about the repression of Uyghurs.
The People’s Daily, similarly, was part of a coordinated state propaganda effort to deny the genocide of Uyghurs, a New York Times and ProPublica investigation found, while China Daily published a now-infamous article praising the CCP for saving Uyghur women from becoming “baby-making machines.” CGTN, like China Daily, operates under the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP.
Other controversies involving CGTN include its distribution of disinformation against opponents of the CCP, broadcasting of coerced confessions, and promotion of pro-Russian rhetoric following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
China Daily and the People’s Daily have also been accused of publishing pro-CCP falsehoods. A common example cited is their coverage of the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests, when they incorrectly portrayed pro-democracy activists as violent terrorists. Pieces from the two outlets that appears on Google News have a decidedly pro-China angle, praising Chinese economic growth and highlighting the country’s technological advancements.
Google News’s reach is massive. The platform consistently attracts over 110 million monthly users, according to the Press Gazette. Apps for the trio of CCP-run news stations also appear on Google’s app store, collectively boasting millions of downloads.
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While Google continues to show users CCP-run content producers on its news platform, high-profile Republicans such as Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and James Lankford (R-OK) have accused the tech giant of suppressing conservative speech. Missouri’s Republican attorney general opened an investigation into these claims, which Google has dismissed as “totally false,” in October 2024.