Google disputed that report’s methodology as flawed, a criticism it has since repeated to Straight Arrow about this report as well. That lends outside credibility to the general claim, but not to MRC’s more specific claim that Apple and Google actively shielded this candidate during a live election. In its latest report, MRC manually checked each aggregator’s top 20 stories each morning, then applied its own sentiment analysis to rate headlines. He also confirmed that MRC didn’t contact Google or Apple before publishing, telling Straight Arrow that “Google stopped responding to us.” Neither MRC’s report nor Schneider’s interview shows Apple or Google specifically reviewed and declined any individual story, only that stories didn’t appear in MRC’s sample.