Apple News boosts left-leaning news outlets, shuts out conservative sources: watchdog

Apple’s popular news app has been aggressively promoting articles from left-leaning news outlets – even as it has all but shut down posts from more conservative publications, according to an explosive study.

The Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group focused on tracking media bias, analyzed a total of 620 stories that were featured by Apple News in high-traffic morning time slots between Jan. 1 and 31. The Apple News feed is a mixture of stories curated by a team of in-house editors and some by algorithm.

Of the 620 stories, a whopping 440 came from outlets that are rated as left-leaning, while the remaining 180 were published by centrist outlets. Meanwhile, outlets which are considered right-leaning – including The Post – were shut out entirely.

In January, Apple News featured a total of 72 articles by The Washington Post, 54 articles by The Associated Press, 50 by NBC News, 34 by The Guardian and 25 by NPR, according to MRC’s data. It published 54 Wall Street Journal articles. The numbers for The Post and Fox News were zero and zero, respectively.

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MRC’s researchers relied on media bias ratings compiled by AllSides, a nonpartisan organization that uses a multi-partisan panel of experts – with two members from the left, two from the center and two from the right – that are trained to spot media bias.

It also conducts blind surveys of ordinary Americans, then averages both sets of results to come up with a rating.

AllSides’s experts did not participate in the MRC study or have any advance knowledge about its findings. Nevertheless, Julie Mastrine, who serves as director of AllSides’ media bias rating system, said she was "not surprised at all" by the results.

"The bottom line is that Americans that are relying on these Big Tech companies to provide them with news are not getting a balanced view and they’re not getting the full scope of perspectives available," Mastrine said in an interview.

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In a statement provided after this story was published, an Apple spokesperson said the News app "provides access to news spanning a wide range of topics from more than 3,000 publications including the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Bloomberg, USA Today, Washington Examiner, New York Post, CBS News, local outlets, and more."

"Apple News users can tailor the app to their interests by choosing to follow or block specific publications or topics," the spokesperson added.

As of Monday, Apple News had gone 96 consecutive days without showcasing a story from a conservative publication in its top stories.

MRC, which began publishing data on news aggregators in November, said Apple News last published an article by a right-leaning source on Nov. 5, when it ran a story by British outlet The Telegraph about the civil war in the Sudan.

MRC noted that the Apple News feed "broadly focused on President Donald Trump’s foreign policy and immigration policy in negative ways" during that time period, including selecting "provocative headlines that raised doubts about Trump’s actions" as it related to immigration and foreign policy.

"Almost half of voting-age Americans own an Apple iPhone," MRC’s Dan Schneider told The Post. "Of course, all its phones come pre-installed with Apple News. Swipe right and you’re inundated with Apple’s cherry-picked news stories. Most people don’t even know they are being fed a steady stream of leftist narratives."

In 2023, AllSides conducted its own study of bias at the 10 most popular news aggregations services. Apple News was given a "lean left" rating, with only Yahoo News and Bing News deemed to be more skewed toward liberal views when curating stories.

"Right-leaning media is really underrepresented," Mastrine said.

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From Jan. 1 to 12, MRC tracked the top 20 stories from AllSides-rated news outlets that appeared on Apple News at approximately 10 a.m. ET. From Jan. 12 to 31, MRC did the same, but checked the Apple News app at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Schneider said MRC "experimented with different times" to see if it altered the results, but aimed to review Apple News in the morning for consistency.

The 620 articles included in MRC’s breakdown for January includes 30 stories by The Athletic, the sports site owned by the New York Times. The Times itself stopped participating with Apple News in 2020. The number also includes 27 pieces of original Apple content, most of which were links to its "Apple News Today" daily podcast.

"It is a subliminal form of propaganda, paid for with corporate dollars but without campaign finance disclosures," Schneider added. "It could be illegal."

The allegations are a potential headache for Apple and its CEO Tim Cook, who has cozied up to President Trump since he re-entered office last year. Key Trump-appointed federal regulators are actively looking to crack down on media bias in Big Tech and beyond.

In February 2024, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson launched an inquiry into tech censorship and said his agency wanted to "better understand how these firms may have violated the law by silencing and intimidating Americans for speaking their minds."

The FTC also cleared a major merger between ad giants Omnicom and Interpublic on the condition that they refrain from anything resembling politically-motivated ad boycotts in the future.

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Elsewhere, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, a fierce Trump ally, infamously blasted Jimmy Kimmel last September over inflammatory comments he made about the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.

This week, Carr’s FCC opened a probe into ABC’s "The View" and whether it has broken rules requiring equal time for interviews with political candidates.