Apple News promoted more than 80 stories that negatively framed Republican priorities in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections, while promoting zero positive stories, according to new research.
Republican voters who rely on Apple News for information were fed about five stories per day that negatively portrayed the Republican’s top ten policy priorities, including immigration, law and order, and drug enforcement, according to a report by Media Research Center (MRC).
The MRC, which examined Apple News’s top 20 stories from September 15 to 30, added that during that time the app failed to push a single story that positively characterized the GOP’s priorities.
“Apple News ran 84 negative headlines on Republican priorities and zero positive ones,” MRC President David Bozell said. “Zero! My dentist finds more good news in a root canal.”
“Millions of voters open that app before they vote, and Apple’s editors are in there like a bartender who waters down only one party’s drinks,” Bozell added. “Come on, Apple, tell us who picks these stories and why Republicans got the whole bad-news buffet.”
MRC staffers Luis Cornelio and Madison Van Zant, who conducted the study, said the following:
In short, Apple News ensured that immigration was framed through court defeats and sensationalist stories; the economy through high gas prices; law and order through positive portrayals of police abolition; cuts to government through accusations of radicalism; foreign policy through portrayals of America’s adversaries as warriors; and efforts to curb waste through claims of unlawful cuts.
“This review adds to MRC’s growing body of evidence that the platform’s editors continue to curate its feeds to push a left-wing political agenda, even as the news app faces scrutiny from the Trump administration,” Cornelio and Van Zant added.
Bozell, meanwhile, has questioned if Apple News is engaging in election interference in the lead-up to the midterms.
Apple News — which comes preinstalled on every iPhone in America — has long been charged with displaying a left-wing bias.
As Breitbart News reported earlier this month, separate MRC research found that the built-in news aggregator app hid stories that reported on the weak financial condition and mounting debt of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) ahead of the midterm elections.
Alana Mastrangelo-Wrask is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
