In the three days following Nicolas Maduro's arrest, the Big Four News Apps (Apples News, Google News, MSN and Yahoo News) have done their best to distort and detract from President Donald Trump's successful exfiltration of the Venezuelan dictator.
For its part, Apple News highlighted more non-Venezuelan related foreign affairs stories than it did stories about the Venezuelan mission. Google News and Yahoo News both ran stories from leftist outlets, consistently putting Trump in a negative light. Meanwhile, MSN ran far more entertainment and sports news stories than hard news. Because the Big Four News Apps funnel much of the news directly to Americans, their distorted coverage in turn distorts people’s understanding of the truth.
Apple News
Of the top 60 stories Apple News published from Jan. 3 - Jan. 5, 2026, it devoted twice as much attention to foreign affairs stories not relating to Venezuela (7 stories about Venezuela, 14 about other foreign affairs matters). The non-Venezuelan foreign affairs stories included a Swiss bar fire that left 40 dead, Iran protests and the Yemeni civil war.
Instead of providing more coverage about the capture of Maduro, Apple News pushed stories about Division lll football, Justin Bieber's pastor and how Heinz is losing its lock on mac & cheese.
Of course, the stories Apple News published about the arrest of Maduro were not framed positively for Trump. Examples include:
- The Washington Post: Trump Revives Old Vision of American Power.
- The Atlantic: Trump Threatens New Leader.
- NBC News: Congress Returns to Venezuela Clash.
Yahoo News
Yahoo News struck an entirely different chord. Of the top 60 stories Yahoo News published following Maduro’s capture, 17 had something to do with Venezuela, and those constituted all but one of the stories Yahoo News highlighted about foreign affairs. The other story was a BBC piece about the Swiss bar fire.
Of the articles about Venezuela, most were from left-leaning outlets and included such gems as:
- The New Republic: You Won’t Believe Who Trump Told About Venezuela Attack Ahead of Time. Here’s a hint: it wasn’t Congress.
- BuzzFeed: Everyone Is Pointing Out The Same Odd Detail In These Trump Venezuela War Room Photos.
- The New Republic: Trump: U.S. Has Abducted Venezuelan Leader After Overnight Bombing.
- NY Daily News: Mayor Mamdani called Trump to express opposition to Maduro’s capture.
Google News
Google News ran the most articles about Venezuela, and its coverage of Venezuela constituted about twice the coverage of other foreign affairs stories such as the Swiss bar fire and the Iran protests.
Of course, Google News also ran headlines negative toward Trump, including other foreign affairs stories. These included:
- The Guardian: Trump threatens Colombia with military action.
- The New York Times: Can the U.S. Legally ‘Run’ Venezuela After Maduro’s Capture?
- BBC News: ‘We need Greenland’: Trump repeats threat to annex Danish territory.
MSN
MSN showed itself to be even less informative about Trump’s freeing of the Venezuelan people than Apple News.
Of the top 60 stories MSN published in the three days following Maduro’s arrest, only five had anything to do with foreign affairs. Four of the stories related to Venezuela, and the other one was about a response to Trump saying that he wants more immigrants from Scandinavia.
MSN proved itself to be unserious about keeping its readers informed of newsworthy topics. Instead, it focused heavily on entertainment news, including multiple stories about Tommy Lee Jones’ daughter Victoria Jones being found dead in her hotel room, sports news as well as random stories about the DNA results from a strange-looking dog and the viral reaction of a Jamaican mother to seeing snow for the first time.
Conclusion
The Big Four News Apps, which are tools or platforms that gather articles from multiple media sources into a single place either through algorithmic selection or human curation, are a growing source for people to get their news. According to a report from the Reuters Institute, “engagement with traditional media sources such as TV, print, and news websites continues to fall, while dependence on social media, video platforms, and online aggregators grows,” particularly in the United States.
The Big Four News Apps all continue to fall well short of being the sort of neutral news source that people can rely on to stay on top of the biggest headlines of the day.
Methodology: During the time period Jan. 3, 2025 - Jan. 5, 2026, MRC researchers examined the top 20 news stories featured on Apple News, Google News, MSN and Yahoo! News each day at 10:00 AM EST. Researchers then analyzed the results.
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