Research Finds Apple News Featured Hundreds of Left-Leaning Stories While Nearly Excluding the Right

Media watchdog analysis shows Apple’s Today feed overwhelmingly favored left-leaning outlets throughout November, renewing concerns over Silicon Valley’s quiet control of the national narrative.

Despite claims of neutrality and personalization, Apple News’ top editorial selections reflected a striking ideological imbalance, according to documented headline tallies.

In late 2025, researchers from the MRC Free Speech America published findings suggesting a dramatic imbalance in the political orientation of headlines curated by the Apple News app, raising questions about editorial gatekeeping on one of the world’s largest news platforms.

According to the MRC’s tally of daily “Top Stories” featured on Apple News throughout November 2025, 559 stories came from left-leaning or ideologically non-right outlets, while only one was classified as right-leaning—and that single article originated from the British publication The Telegraph.

The methodology used by MRC researchers involved tracking the top 20 stories Apple News editors selected each morning at roughly 10:00 a.m. EST over the whole month, then matching each outlet to bias classifications from the media bias monitoring service AllSides.

AllSides rates Apple News independently as Lean Left, based on prior analyses showing that a majority of articles stem from left- or center-leaning outlets, with only a small fraction from right-leaning sources.

Apple’s own support documentation frames the Today feed as a mix of editor-selected top stories, user-preferred channels, trending items, and personalized suggestions, noting that users can influence this feed by following or blocking outlets and topics—but that top editorial selections are not user-blockable. 

Independent academic work underscores that curated news aggregators like Apple News wield significant “gatekeeping” power to shape what millions of readers see, whether through headline placement or human editorial judgment.