Scarborough Tweets (and Deletes) Scolding of Google for Promoting Conspiracies
It started with a tweet.
No, maybe it just started with a Google search for the White Helmets. The White Helmets are a volunteer group in rebel-held Syria and were the subject of an Academy Award-winning documentary short. Most people can objectively agree that these are good people.
When Business Insider‘s Natasha Bertrand looked them up recently, though, she found that their Google results are now prominently displaying a conspiracy theory that the group killed kids to fake all of those horrific videos from the recent Syrian gas attack. Conspiracy theories around the attack and Donald Trump‘s decision to launch missiles over it have been rampant, sure, but at the top of Google results?
Bertrand tweeted it…
Related: The first article when you google “White Helmets” is a conspiracy theory about the org “murdering kids for a fake gas attack video” pic.twitter.com/yiaSVwZzZC
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) April 8, 2017
…and then the New York Times‘s Alex Burns signal-boosted her…
C’mon Google. This is terrible.https://t.co/wJR235XV1d
— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) April 8, 2017
…which led to NBC’s Joe Scarborough Googling it himself, confirming the story, and weighing in:
Sorry the tweet looks weird, but we had to screengrab it straight out of the Mediaite Slack since Scarborough seems to have deleted it.
We’ve reached out for comment and will update if we hear back. For now, the top “White Helmets” Google result is still the story about them allegedly killing the kids they work so hard to save.
[image via screengrab]
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