Wild new level of bias by Apple News and Google News exposed

(Media Research Center)

Two of the biggest news aggregators serving headlines and news stories to the American public every day show consumers content from news organizations that overwhelmingly support Democrats, according to a new study from the Media Research Group.

The results of the study aren't exactly surprising given the left-leaning bias the mainstream media has exhibited for decades. But the data revealed in the study provides a new way to understand the depth of the bias not just from the news organizations themselves, but also the tech companies that shape what news content Americans are driven to consume.

The conservative watchdog group Media Research Center (MRC) found that the news sources featured most prominently by Apple News and Google News haven't endorsed a Republican presidential candidate for nearly 40 years.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and USA Today -- the most preferred news sources by the two tech giants -- have all endorsed every Democrat presidential candidate going back to 1988, for a total of 31 endorsements of Democrat candidates. MRC pointed out that USA Today actually endorsed "against Trump" in 2024, but also didn't endorse Democrat Kamala Harris. MRC uses ratings from AllSides to determine whether a media outlet is left-leaning or right-leaning. 

“Silicon Valley has engineered these news feeds to quietly tilt public debate, insulating voters from conservative reporting while treating partisan, left-wing outlets as the nation’s default news authority,” MRC President David Bozell said. “Apple and Google systematically funnel tens of millions of users into media sources that have backed Democrats for president 31 times without a single Republican endorsement in 40 years."

Microsoft's MSN homepage was slightly less biased, MRC researchers found. The one of the top five news sources MSN features most often actually did endorse a Republican presidential candidate twice in the last 40 years, with The San Francisco Chronicle backing George H.W. Bush's campaigns in both 1988 and 1992 -- a notion that would be all but unthinkable the today's media environment. 

MRC even put together a handy scorecard, which can be seen below and shared easily on social media, detailing how each liberal news organization has endorsed ahead of a presidential election going back to the late 1980s.

(Media Research Center.)

Google operates the world's biggest search engine, making it the primary gatekeeper for what information Americans are able to find online, and the Apple News app comes pre-loaded on iPhones, iPads and laptops, giving it extensive reach in determining what news content users of its devices are exposed to. 

A separate analysis earlier this year by MRC found that Apple News is the "most radical" of all major news apps, and often promotes "negative and misleading headlines." Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew Ferguson sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier this year warning that the tech giant may be in violation of consumer protection laws.

Read the full study from the MRC here.