Fans of ‘Unplanned’ Blast Google for Classifying Film as Propaganda

Ashley Bratcher attends 'Unplanned' Red Carpet Premiere in Hollywood, Calif., on March 18, 2019. Maury Phillips/Getty Images for Unplanned Movie, LLC

An American internet search provider has been harshly criticized for classifying a movie about parenthood as propaganda.

Google recently listed the pro-life drama new release movie Unplanned as “drama/propaganda.” The move came just weeks after social media giant Twitter locked the film’s user account, a move that supporters of the film called unfair treatment and suppressing freedom of speech.

According to Unplanned’s lead actress, Ashley Bratcher, the film exposes a number of false statements made by not-for-profit organization Planned Parenthood through telling the story of former Planned Parenthood Clinic Director Abby Johnson, who eventually became an anti-abortion activist.

Kelsey Bolar, senior writer and producer at think tank the Heritage Foundation, questioned whether Google’s classification actually exists.

“Who knew that ‘propaganda’ was a movie genre?” she said in a Twitter post dated April 11. “Google once again exposing its gross political bias.”

Unplanned’s official Twitter account also attacked Google for deterring people from watching the film.

“Well hey Google, if you search #UnPlanned ... you still peg us as propaganda. Deceptive much?” the official movie page said in a Twitter post dated April 12.

Another disgruntled person was surprised to see left-leaning political films like Vice (2018), a biography of Former Vice President Dick Cheney (R), and Michael Moore documentary Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) only being categorized as drama/comedy and drama/crime respectively.

“Unplanned is labeled as propaganda,” Ryan B. Leslie said in a Twitter post dated April 11. “Other films of notoriety and a filmmaker known for political films.”

Google searches for God’s Not Dead (2014) by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza was classified a Christian drama and not propaganda either.

Google said it was already aware of the disputed classification and blamed its knowledge graph for analyzing large amounts of content on the film to be propaganda and labelling it without a universal consensus.

“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,” the spokesperson told Fox News.

The company has reversed its classification and removed the term propaganda from its search result and the film’s genre.

Bolar welcomed Google’s backflip although she noted this kind of error does not seem to happen with other controversial films.

“Very glad to see that Google removed the ‘propaganda’ label for @UnplannedMovie,” she said in a Twitter post dated April 12. “So weird how Al Gore and Michael Moore movies never face this type of confusion.”