Interesting. The Republican Party abolished the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 and now complain of "fake news" and search engines being "unfair." Aren't they also the party always talking about the unintended consequences of public policy? Oh the irony!

Honestly though, who in 2018 is using search engines to get their news? I would wager most people visit their favorite news outlets directly to catch up on current events. Or, sadly, go to Facebook. I think this is much ado about nothing.

I often use google to look up news when someone tells me on chat or in a twitch stream for example. However, this is for finding information on a specific event that might have happened in the last hour, which google is really good at finding.

People may not be reading news via Google Search, but they will often search for a person or place that is currently in the news. News outlets do get a lot of organic traffic that way.

  The Republican Party abolished the Fairness Doctrine in 1987

That would be some trick, considering that the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.