Google Apologizes for Labeling ‘Unplanned’ Movie as ‘Propaganda’

Tech giant Google has apologized for labeling the pro-life film Unplanned as “propaganda” on its search engine.

Fox News reported recently that tech giant Google had labeled the upcoming pro-life film Unplanned as a “Drama/Propaganda” when users searched for the film. Kelsey Bolar of The Daily Signal tweeted a screenshot of the search result showing the label, it can be seen below:

Who knew that “propaganda” was a movie genre? @Google once again exposing its gross political bias. @UnplannedMovie pic.twitter.com/jOh6TlqQ7C

— Kelsey Bolar (Harkness) (@kelseybolar) April 11, 2019

In comparison, the recent film VICE starring Christian Bale about former Vice President Dick Cheney received no such label, neither did many of the films made by left-wing documentarian Michael Moore.

Unplanned is labeled as propaganda.

Other films of notoriety and a filmmaker known for political films. @RealDeanCain @guypbenson h/t @kelseybolar pic.twitter.com/7CMZwRysWJ

— Ryan B. Leslie (@RyanBLeslie) April 12, 2019

Google quickly caved to scrutiny over the issue, however, as Fox News reported:

A Google spokesperson told Fox News that after analyzing web content about “Unplanned,” there was a large volume that called the movie propaganda. But after being made aware of facts that have been disputed through the company’s “Knowledge Graph,” the company works to fix issues, the spokesperson said.

After the controversy was sparked, Google has updated its search results, removing the propaganda tag.

Google told Fox News that the issue related to Google’s “Knowledge Graph” which analyzes web content. A Google spokesperson told Fox: “When we’re made aware of disputed facts in our Knowledge Graph, we work to fix the issues, as we’ve done in this case.”

At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week titled “Stifling Free Speech: Technological Censorship and the Public Discourse,” Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) grilled a representative from Twitter about the site’s hate speech policies and the suspension of the Twitter account for the pro-life film Unplanned. Hawley stated: “so let me just ask you a few more pointed questions, your account for the movie Unplanned, why was that suspended?”

Twitter representative Carlos Mohje Jr. replied: “What we discovered — we have a system which tries to stop individuals who have broken rules in the past from coming back on [the platform], the individual who started the Unplannedaccount had previously been suspended for violating our rules and as a result our automated systems flagged that account and it was taken down for an hour.”

Unplanned was released in late March to select theatres, find out where to watch it here