Less than 2% of the top stories on Apple News last month came from right-leaning news outlets – a paltry increase from 0% a month earlier that amounts to “damage control” in the face of a possible federal crackdown on media bias, according to a conservative watchdog.
As The Post exclusively reported, Apple came under fire last month after a Media Research Center study showed it failed to feature a single article by a conservative outlet among the top stories on its popular news app in January.
In a Feb. 11 letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson formally warned that Apple could be violating federal consumer protection laws against “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.” Apple News finally featured an article by a right-leaning outlet on Feb 12 – its first in 100 days – when it promoted a Fox News story about the death of actor James Van Der Beek.
Out of 560 stories tracked during a new analysis by MRC in February, just eight of them, or 1.4%, were written by conservative outlets. Meanwhile, 400 articles, or 75%, were written by outlets classified as left-leaning. The remaining 152 articles were either from outlets rated as centrist or outlets that were not assigned a bias classification, like small local newspapers.
“2% is not progress. It’s damage control,” MRC President David Bozell said in a statement. “If public exposure and a federal inquiry only yield a modest adjustment, that suggests the bias we documented was deeply embedded.”
“Apple News should not require public pressure to reflect viewpoint diversity,” Bozell added.
“This is not about token inclusion. It’s about whether one of the most powerful information gatekeepers in the country operates fairly.”
Apple did not return a request for comment on the MRC’s findings.
The watchdog’s researchers relied on 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 was not directly involved in MRC’s analysis.
“Apple would need to make much more substantial changes to help reduce news polarization and give Americans a broader, more balanced view,” said Julie Mastrine, director of AllSides’ media bias rating system.
Concerns about potential bias at Apple News caught the attention of President Trump, who retweeted The Post’s initial report on the troubling data on his Truth Social account last month.
Critics allege that the app is particularly influential because it comes pre-installed on millions of Apple devices, including the iPhone. Apple has billed it as the top news app in the country.
Apple’s editorial team has been led since 2017 by editor-in-chief Lauren Kern, who formerly held editor roles at New York Magazine and the New York Times Magazine. In 2018, the Times declared that Kern had “quietly become one of the most powerful figures in English-language media” due to Apple News’ massive audience.
A separate study published by AllSides last month focused exclusively on sections of the Apple News app that are hand-curated by the company’s editorial team. During a two-week period last October tracked for the study, Apple’s editors didn’t display a single article from a conservative outlet in its “top news” section.
MRC analyzed the top 20 stories featured on Apple News each day at 8:30 a.m. ET from Feb. 1 through Feb. 28. The Apple News feed features a mix of stories handpicked by an in-house editorial team and some that are surfaced by algorithm.
In February, Apple News featured 57 articles by the Associated Press, 44 by the Washington Post and 38 by NBC News — all of which are rated as “left-leaning” outlets. Among outlets rated as centrist, 46 articles came from the Wall Street Journal and 40 came from Reuters.
Seven of the eight stories from right-leaning articles came from Fox News, on topics ranging from a delayed NASA launch and US strikes on drug boats to Bill Clinton’s deposition about the Jeffrey Epstein files. The other came from British outlet The Telegraph and was about the arrest of the former Prince Andrew.
In his letter to Apple, the FTC’s Ferguson urged Cook to “conduct a comprehensive review of Apple’s terms of service and ensure that Apple News’ curation of articles is consistent with those terms and representations made to consumers and, if it is not, to take corrective action swiftly.”
Elsewhere, Sen. Marsha Blackburn demanded that Cook answer questions about whether Apple has “systematically suppressed” conservative viewpoints.
“The American public increasingly relies on services like Apple News to provide them with information, and they deserve to have access to perspectives across the political spectrum,” Blackburn wrote in a letter on Feb. 19.
