Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, March 20, 2026 Non-AI Real World News

One small step for objectivity, one giant leap for disingenuousness.

Apple News has increased the amount of stories it gets from conservative news outlets by a whopping 2%.

That is up from the previous zero percent.

The news curation app was accused of political bias after going 100 days without including a single article from a conservative news source in its morning editions, according to a report from the Media Research Center.

Apple News, one of the Big Four news apps along with Google News, MSN and Yahoo News, broke the 100-day embargo by running a Fox News Digital story on the death of actor James Van Der Beek on Feb. 12, a day after Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson warned that the one-sided aggregation may violate federal law against “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.”

The Media Research Center said the Apple News app finished the month with a total of eight articles from conservative outlets, mainly Fox News Digital and The Telegraph, versus 562 articles from liberal outlets in its morning top 20 news roundup.

Media Research Center President David Bozell said Apple News appears more interested in covering its own assets than in providing balanced, curated news.

“Two percent is not progress. It’s damage control,” 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,” he said. “This is not about token inclusion. It’s about whether one of the most powerful information gatekeepers in the country operates fairly.”

Apple News is preloaded on every Apple iPhone sold in the U.S., and Google News is automatically included on Android cellphones. MSN comes on personal computers, according to the Media Research Center.

Bozell told The Washington Times that the suppression of center-right news sites represents “another form of censorship.”

“It’s creating this false mirror where so-called legacy outlets are considered to be providing the consensus narrative in the country, whereas center-right or right-wing outlets are these niche platforms that get pats on the head, but that’s it,” Bozell said.

“If you’re going to preload these news apps onto your tech tools that we all have to use now to participate in the world, it’s incumbent upon them to have a fairer presentation,” he said.

2026 Contract With Our Readers

  ‘Covering its assets’: Apple News moves the needle up to 2% of its stories from conservative sites, WorldTribune.com