EXCLUSIVE: The most influential digital news aggregators continue deciding which outlets get seen and who gets ignored. Fresh evidence collected by the Media Research Center further corroborates that left-leaning outlets remain the primary beneficiaries.
The new evidence stems from a simple comparison: Which news outlets are Americans actually reading, and which outlets are Apple News, Google News, Microsoft's MSN and Yahoo News choosing to promote?
MRC researchers analyzed Press Gazette’s latest list of the 50 most-visited news websites in the United States, classified the outlets using AllSides media-bias ratings and then examined how many appeared among the 50 most-promoted national and international sources across the Big Four News Apps in April.
The results showed a clear imbalance: left-leaning outlets, as listed by Press Gazette, were promoted by the Big Four News Apps at nearly six times the rate of right-leaning outlets, resulting in a plethora of radical, biased headlines like “You Can Smell It Now: The Trump Presidency Is in Total Free Fall” from The New Republic.
By contrast, right-leaning outlets on Press Gazette’s list — including the New York Post, Daily Mail and Breitbart — were shut out from promotion despite ranking among the nation’s most-visited news websites and, in some cases, attracting larger audiences than promoted left-leaning outlets.
MRC’s Findings:
- The Big Four News Apps nearly shut out right-leaning media outlets in April. The nation’s leading news aggregators only pushed 1 of 6 (16.7%) right-leaning outlets among their 50 most-promoted sources.
- Despite attracting over 414 million visits in April, five of the six right-leaning outlets (New York Post, Daily Mail, Breitbart, The Gateway Pundit and Newsmax) received no comparable promotion from the news aggregators.
- Meanwhile, the Big Four News Apps overwhelmingly promoted left-leaning media sources. Of the 25 left-leaning media outlets in the Press Gazette’s top 50 list, the news aggregators promoted 23 (92%) among their top sources throughout the month.
- The Big Four News Apps also pushed a majority of the center-leaning outlets: six of eight (75%) appeared among the most-promoted sources.
The Readership Data Reveals the Aggregators' Double Standard
The answer to how Press Gazette’s rankings demonstrate bias across the Big Four News Apps is twofold.
Apple News, Google News, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo News have long pushed left-leaning outlets across their feeds, helping these leftist outlets generate substantial traffic. The promotion helps these outlets maintain their position as some of the most-visited news websites even as poll after poll show that Americans do not trust them.
At the same time, multiple MRC studies have shown that right-leaning outlets receive virtually no promotion from the same news aggregators. As a result, those outlets have largely relied on organic readership and social media traction to build their audiences.
Press Gazette’s rankings show that Americans continue to consume content from right-leaning outlets in significant numbers. Despite that demonstrated demand, most of those outlets remain absent from the Big Four News Apps’ most-promoted list in April.
Six outlets in Press Gazette’s rankings are classified as right-leaning by media-bias rating firm AllSides: Fox News, New York Post, Daily Mail, Breitbart, The Gateway Pundit and Newsmax. Collectively, those outlets received over 414 million visits in April. Yet only Fox News appeared among the Big Four News Apps’ 50 most-promoted sources.
By contrast, numerous left-leaning outlets, including The New York Times, CNN, People, USA Today, NBC News, CNBC and The Associated Press are ranked among both the nation’s most-visited news websites and the aggregators’ most-promoted sources.
To analyze the data, MRC excluded 11 entries from Press Gazette’s rankings because they were either unrated sources, news aggregators themselves or other aggregated-content websites. MRC then used AllSides ratings to classify the remaining outlets by ideological leaning and compared those results against the 50 most-promoted sources across Apple News, Google News, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo News during April.
- Of the 25 left-leaning outlets that appeared among America’s most-visited news websites, 23 were also among the Big Four News Apps’ 50 most-promoted sources — a rate of 92%.
- Among center-leaning outlets, six of eight appeared among the aggregators’ most-promoted sources, a rate of 75%.
- Of the six right-leaning websites that ranked among the nation’s most-visited news sources, only one (16%) appeared among the Big Four News Apps’ 50 most-promoted outlets.
The correlation between America’s most-visited news websites and the promotion patterns of the Big Four News Apps is the latest piece of evidence in a growing body of research suggesting ideological favoritism by these digital news gatekeepers.
MRC has long documented the influence these platforms wield over the news Americans consume. Previous studies show that Apple News, Google News, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo News frequently ignored stories damaging to the political left, sidelined stories from right-leaning outlets and framed coverage involving President Donald Trump in a negative light. The Press Gazette data adds another data point to that broader pattern.
What a News Feed of 92% Left-Leaning Stories Looks Like: Fear-Driven Rhetoric, Misleading Framing and Attacks Against Trump
The consequences of news feeds plagued by left-leaning stories are far from abstract.
To measure the consequences, the MRC reviewed the stories promoted by Apple News, Google News, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo News in April and found that a large share of the most amplified coverage leaned left politically, with headlines that often framed Trump in adversarial or loaded terms.
Some of the language mirrors the messaging a reader would expect from a political operation and certainly not from a neutral news outlet.
Framing has consequences. Here are some examples:
On Apple News:
- “Supreme Court remade by Trump ushers in historic defeats for civil rights,” by The Washington Post, promoted April 10.
- “Data shows three-quarters of ICE arrestees in Minnesota had no criminal record,” by MPR News, promoted April 1.
- “GOP-Led House Rebukes Trump on Expelling Haitian Immigrants,” by The Wall Street Journal, promoted April 17.
On Google News:
- “Maybe Trump Should Not Have Given This Speech,” by The Atlantic, promoted April 2.
- “Trump accused of running ‘misogynistic administration’ after Bondi dismissal,” by The Guardian, promoted April 3.
- “Top Doctor Sounds Alarm on Trump, 79, Over ‘Dementia Signs’,” by The Daily Beast, promoted April 6.
On Microsoft’s MSN:
- “Trump’s chances of being removed by 25th Amendment climb,” by Newsweek, promoted April 6.
- “Calls to invoke 25th Amendment against Trump surge: What to know,” by Newsweek, promoted April 8.
- “Maddow: Trump's fear is palpable as authoritarian peer Orbán is resoundingly rejected in Hungary,” by MS Now, promoted April 14.
- “MAGA malaise festers into some high-profile buyers’ remorse,” by CNN, promoted April 23.
On Yahoo News:
- “JD Vance’s demon talk is lame youth outreach,” by Salon, promoted April 1.
- “Trump treats war as entertainment,” by Salon, promoted April 2.
- “You Can Smell It Now: The Trump Presidency Is in Total Free Fall,” by The New Republic, promoted April 6.
- “‘The 25th Amendment was written with Donald Trumps in mind,’ ex-CIA director says,” by The Independent, promoted April 13.
Methodology: The Media Research Center used Press Gazette’s list of the top 50 news websites for April 2026. MRC then used ratings from media bias firm AllSides to classify each website according to its ideological leanings.
MRC excluded news aggregation websites, including the Big Four News Apps themselves, as well as websites not rated by AllSides. The excluded websites were: BuzzFeed, Drudge Report, Google News, IndiaTimes, MSN.com, Newsbreak, Patch, Substack, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo News. MRC also excluded websites that were not rated by AllSides, namely BuzzFeed, IndiaTimes and ScienceAlert.
MRC then tracked the national news websites most often promoted by Apple News, Google News, Microsoft MSN and Yahoo News during April 2026. Local news outlets, news aggregators and websites without an AllSides rating were excluded from this analysis. These outlets included: 19th Amendment, ABC 7, AFP, Apple News, Entertainment Weekly, FFX Now, Fool, Good Morning America, Hello Magazine, MSN, Patch, Popular Science, Tasting Table, WJLA, WTOP, Yahoo Sports and The Burn.
Finally, MRC compared the ideological composition of the outlets promoted by the Big Four News Apps to those of the outlets appearing on Press Gazette’s top 50 list.
