Google allows users to filter news sources in personalized feed feature 

Google is giving users the power to choose which news outlets appear in their Google News results

Americans already tend to favor outlets that match their political views, and this new feature could make it even easier to filter the information they see

Google's preferred sources feature lets users select their favorite news outlets to appear more

prominently in the search's top stories section. Once you select your chosen sources, there will be

a specific feed of stories just from them, offering a tailored view of current events

Google first tested the feature in June and is now rolling it out in the U.S. and India

This personalization feature comes at a time when Americans' news habits are already strongly

influenced by political alignment. A Pew research survey shows that Democrats tend to watch and read

news from left-leaning outlets. Similarly, Republicans tend to read and listen to news

outlets on the right 57 of Republicans say they regularly get news from Fox News while 48 of Democrats regularly get their news from CNN The new Google feature lets Americans customize search results to show news

from their favorite outlets. And given the patterns highlighted by Pew Research there

it's likely many will seek out the news that aligns with their political views

This gives users the power to filter out perspectives they don't agree with

potentially making it easier to reinforce partisan narratives. At SAN, I host a podcast called Bias Breakdown

where we dissect political narratives the partisan media is offering its audiences

Oftentimes, the narratives lead to two different conclusions using two different subsets of facts in order to push a political agenda

To cut through both left and right media noise, I encourage you to check us out

Our latest episode out this week touched on crime in Washington, D.C.

and how left and right media is cherry-picking statistics in order to push a narrative either for or against President Trump's federalizing of the D.C. police

Thank you for watching. For Straight Arrow News, I'm Kara Rucker