Apple preloads its news app on every iPhone sold in America.
Now we know what it was feeding you – and it wasn't the news.
The Federal Trade Commission just put Tim Cook on notice, and Apple's response makes the scandal worse.
Apple News Bias by the Numbers: Zero Fox News Stories in 100 Days
Apple News ran 620 stories in January.
Not one – zero – came from a right-leaning outlet.
The Media Research Center tracked every story Apple's editorial team hand-selected for the morning top 20 between January 1 and January 31. The results: 440 stories from left-wing outlets, 180 from centrist sources, and a grand total of zero from Fox News, the New York Post, or any conservative publication in the country.
For comparison, Apple News ran 72 Washington Post stories that month. NPR got 25. The Guardian got 34.
This wasn't algorithm drift. Apple News uses a team of in-house editors – led by Lauren Kern, the former deputy editor of New York Times Magazine and executive editor of New York Magazine – to hand-pick what tens of millions of subscribers see each morning. Someone made a decision, every single day for 100 days straight, to exclude every conservative outlet in existence.
The FTC Warning That Put Tim Cook on Notice
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson didn't stay quiet.
In mid-February, Ferguson fired off a letter to Cook warning that Apple's curation practices may violate Section 5 of the FTC Act – the law prohibiting unfair or deceptive acts or practices.
President Trump amplified the MRC report on Truth Social the same day the letter went public. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt followed on X.
The pressure landed. Apple News broke its 100-day conservative blackout two days later – running a Fox News Digital story about the death of actor James Van Der Beek.
That was their big fix.
One story after 100 days of nothing.
By the end of February, Apple had run eight articles from right-leaning outlets out of 530 total – 1.5%. MRC President David Bozell put it plainly: "Two percent is not progress. It's damage control."
"If public exposure and a federal inquiry only yield a modest adjustment," Bozell added, "that suggests the bias we documented was deeply embedded."
Big Tech Censorship of Conservatives Has Always Worked This Way
This isn't new. This is the playbook.
Twitter shadow-banned conservative accounts for years before Elon Musk bought it and released the receipts. Facebook suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election. Google labeled the California Republican Party with "Nazism" in its search results – then called it a mistake.
The mistakes always cut one direction.
Heritage Foundation analysts have documented what they call "soft censorship" – not banning accounts outright, but making conservative content invisible. Conservatives were still technically on the platform. Their content just disappeared.
Apple News pulled the same move on a massive scale: conservatives weren't blocked, they just didn't exist in the morning feed that tens of millions of people opened every day.
Now Apple wants credit for bumping that number from zero to eight.
The Most Powerful Gatekeeper Nobody Talks About
Apple News isn't optional.
It comes preloaded on every iPhone sold in the United States – no download required, no opt-in necessary. Unlike social media platforms where users choose to sign up, Apple News is simply there, waiting on the phone the moment it comes out of the box.
Google News works the same way on Android. MSN loads on every PC. These four apps – Apple News, Google News, MSN, Yahoo News – are what Bozell calls the "Big Four" digital gatekeepers, driving enormous traffic to every publication in the country.
When Apple's editors exclude Fox News from the morning feed, they aren't making an editorial call. They're deciding what news exists for tens of millions of Americans who never asked for a left-wing editor in the first place.
"It's creating this false mirror," Bozell told The Washington Times, "where so-called legacy outlets are considered to be providing the consensus narrative in the country, whereas center-right outlets are these niche platforms that get pats on the head, but that's it."
Apple pushed back with a corporate non-answer: a spokesperson said the app offers content from more than 3,000 publications and that users can customize what they follow.
What Apple didn't mention: when MRC researchers tried to block The Wall Street Journal, a message appeared telling them Apple's editors could still override the block. The same override caveat appeared for other outlets. Adjust the settings all day long – Apple's curators get final say.
That's not a correction. Apple is betting the pressure will pass, the news cycle will move on, and Lauren Kern's team can go right back to deciding that 72 Washington Post stories a month is balance.
Every Big Tech company has run this calculation before, and they've been right every time.
The FTC needs to make sure they're wrong this time.
Sources:
- Valerie Richardson, "Apple News goes from 0% to 2% content from right-leaning outlets after FTC pushback," The Washington Times, March 9, 2026.
- Heather Moon, "Apple News After Viral MRC Study, Ups Right-Leaning Outlets Inclusion to Only 2%," MRC Free Speech America, March 5, 2026.
- "Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson Issues Warning Letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook," Federal Trade Commission, February 12, 2026.
- Thomas Barrabi, "Apple News boosts left-leaning news outlets, shuts out conservative sources: watchdog," Fox Business, February 10, 2026.
- "The alleged bias of Apple News: Ex-liberal mag editor tasked to handpick stories for millions of iPhone users," Fox News, February 2026.
