Apple News blasted after boosting coverage by conservative outlets from 0% to 2% in February: Damage control
Less than 2% of the top stories on Apple News last month came from right-leaning news outlets – a paltry increase from 0% a month earlier that amounts to “damage control” in the face of a possible federal crackdown on media bias, according to a conservative watchdog.As The Post exclusively reported, Apple came under fire last month after a Media Research Center study showed it failed to feature a single article by a conservative outlet among the top stories on its popular news app in January.In a Feb.11 letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson formally warned that Apple could be violating federal consumer protection laws against “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.” Apple News finally featured an article by a right-leaning outlet on Feb 12 – its first in 100 days – when it promoted a Fox News story about the death of actor James Van Der Beek.Out of 560 stories tracked during a new analysis by MRC in February, just eight of them, or 1.4%, were written by conservative outlets.
Meanwhile, 400 articles, or 75%, were written by outlets classified as left-leaning.The remaining 152 articles were either from outlets rated as centrist or outlets that were not assigned a bias classification, like small local newspapers.“2% is not progress.
It’s damage control,” MRC President David 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,” Bozell added.“This is not about token inclusion.
It’s about whether one of the most powerful information gatekeepers in the country operates fairly.”Apple did not return a request for comment on the MRC’s findings.The watchdog’s researchers relied on ratings compiled by AllSides, a nonpartisan organization that uses a multi-partisan panel of experts — with two members from the left, two from the center...