Apple News played favorites when it covered the Republican primary elections held in several states in May, seizing on leftist media coverage to push an anti-Trump narrative. The news aggregator relied on 63% leftist media coverage compared to only 13% right-leaning coverage. 
By cherry-picking the most biased coverage against Trump-endorsed candidates and selecting five times as many leftist outlets to address the Republican primaries, Apple News was more of a campaign mouthpiece for the left rather than an actual news aggregator for its users. Its negative headlines camouflaged the overwhelming victory of Trump-endorsed candidates.
The tech giant news aggregator posted only three stories from right-leaning media outlets covering the results of Republican primary elections that directly involved Trump-endorsed candidates, while five-times as many (15) election-related headlines were promoted from left-leaning outlets.
MRC Findings of Apple News’s Top 20 Morning Editions in May:
- Apple News promoted five times as many (15) articles about primary elections from leftist sources as from right-leaning (3). Apple News leaned heavily on leftist sources in its story selection while covering the important Republican primary elections, such as the battle between incumbent Texas senior Senator John Cornyn and Trump-endorsed Attorney General Ken Paxton.
- Of the 24 election-related articles that Apple News featured in the month, over half (13) of the headlines held a clear negative framing against the Trump-endorsed candidates that won their primaries. Only five had headlines that discussed the winning Trump-endorsed candidates in a positive light.
- Out of 589 daily headlines from AllSides-rated outlets that MRC examined, Apple News promoted 436 from left-leaning outlets and only six from right-leaning outlets. Apple News regressed nearly to its pre-Federal Trade Commission warning letter days, featuring only 1% of its daily morning top headlines from right-leaning outlets during the month. Another 146 stories came from center-rated outlets.
“Apple’s overt bias in May makes clear it’s not interested in balance,” said VP for MRC for Free Speech America Dan Schneider. “When it comes to noise surrounding the tech titan, the volume was cranked up to 11 back in February when the FTC called out Tim Cook over the news apps’ potential misrepresentations to its consumers. Just a little under four months later, and it appears the tech titan has already forgotten—and just in time to impact the upcoming midterm elections.”
Apple News Promoted Leftist Articles about Primary Elections By a Five to One Margin
Throughout the month of May, Apple News featured two dozen stories about the various Republican primary elections happening across the country. The hottest primary elections featured a Trump-endorsed candidate who handily won. These elections included:
- Incumbent Texas U.S. Senator John Cornyn running against Trump-endorsed Texas Attorney-General Ken Paxton.
- Incumbent Kentucky U.S. Representative Thomas Massie running against Trump-endorsed Ed Gallrein.
- Incumbent Louisiana U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy running against Trump-endorsed U.S. Representative Julia Letlow.
- Casey Putsch running against Trump-endorsed candidate for Governor of Ohio Vivek Ramaswamy.
While each of these races were covered by Apple News, there were only three stories about these elections featured from right-leaning outlets versus 15 from leftist outlets. Each of the three right-leaning stories came from Fox News. One framed the “high-stakes primaries” around the Kentucky House race and Trump’s distaste of Rep. Thomas Massie, and another framed the Louisiana Senate GOP primary around Trump’s disliking of Sen. Bill Cassidy. The third Fox News article was a roundup piece noting that “Trump-backed nominees dominate primary contests as president tightens party vice grip.”
Apple News Pushed Headlines That Negatively Framed Primary Elections, Focusing on Candidates Targeted by Trump Over Those He Endorsed
Of the headlines selected by Apple News editors to feature among its top daily morning stories in May, 24 covered the primary elections. These broke down further into stories that were framed positively and those that were framed negatively.
Negative stories focused on Trump’s targeting of specific candidates in certain primaries to ensure they did not win. Over half of the total stories (13) landed on this list. The list of such headlines included:
- “Trump exacts revenge in Indiana over redistricting vote, with five GOP legislators defeated,” by NBC News, promoted May 6.
- “Trump Nemesis Sen. Bill Cassidy Defeated in GOP Primary,” by The Wall Street Journal, promoted May 17 and again on May 18.
- “Ramaswamy’s personality, Trump’s revenge define Ohio, Indiana primaries,” by USA Today, promoted May 5.
- “Senate GOP leaders spent months trashing Paxton. Can they turn the page and unify against Talarico?,” by The Texas Tribune, promoted May 28.
- “Trump's retribution? What to watch in Tuesday's elections in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan,” by The Associated Press, promoted May 5.
- “Thomas Massie Defeated in GOP Primary After Attacks From Trump,” by The Wall Street Journal, promoted May 20.
- “How another Republican targeted by Trump lost a primary,” by Apple News, promoted May 18.
- “Sen. Cassidy battles Trump-backed challenger in Louisiana Republican primary,” by The Associated Press, promoted May 16.
- “Trump targets Massie in explosive Kentucky showdown as six states hold high-stakes primaries,” by Fox News, promoted May 19.
- “US Rep. Thomas Massie loses Kentucky GOP primary to Ed Gallrein in another victory for Trump,” by The Associated Press, promoted May 20.
- “After Indiana purge, Trump sets sights on Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy,” by Fox News, promoted May 17.
Positive stories were far fewer. These headlines focused on the fact that a Trump-endorsed candidate won. Among these few headlines were:
- “5 Trump-endorsed Indiana Senate challengers prevail, one 'too close to call,’” by IndyStar, promoted May 6.
- “Vivek Ramaswamy wins GOP nomination for governor in Ohio,” by NBC News, promoted May 6.
- “Paxton crushes Cornyn in Senate primary in a big win for MAGA,” by The Washington Post, promoted May 27.
- “Takeaways from Indiana, Ohio and Michigan: Trump's flex pays off and Democrats win special election,” by The Associated Press, promoted on May 6.
- “Trump-backed nominees dominate primary contests as president tightens party vice grip,” by Fox News, promoted May 21.
Apple News Regressed Toward Its Overwhelming Leftist Bias Against Right-Leaning Stories, Focusing Almost Entirely on Stories from the Left
In total, Apple News promoted 589 articles from AllSides-rated outlets in the month of May. Of these, only six were from right-leaning outlets (5 from Fox News and 1 from the New York Post). While Apple News has not fully regressed to its pre-FTC letter habit of refusing to promote even a single right-leaning outlet, it has retreated to less than 1% of its total AllSides-rated stories coming from the right. After the FTC sent a stern letter to Apple about its clear bias in January, the digital news gatekeeper ever-so-slightly modified its behavior, hitting a 2% balance of right-leaning stories in February 2026. But any hopes that this trend would continue have been completely dashed by May.
According to the latest Press Gazette rankings, six right-leaning news outlets are among the most visited news sites in America, including Fox News, New York Post, Daily Mail, Newsmax, Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit.
Below are the top 10 AllSides-rated national and international outlets Apple News pushed from May. 1 - May 31, 2026:
Apple News’s habit of favoring the left matters. According to the Pew Research Center, 86% of Americans turn to their digital devices for news “at least sometimes.” With Apple News coming preinstalled on every iPhone, a considerable number of users are exposed to its leftist bias by default. The tech giant boasts 125 million visits per month.
Methodology: During the time period May. 1 - 31, 2026, MRC researchers examined the top 20 stories featured on Apple News each day at approximately 8:30 AM ET. MRC researchers used the AllSides media bias ratings, which categorize an outlet as “left,” “lean left,” “center,” “lean right” or “right” to determine the overall bias presented by Apple News and analyzed the results. MRC searched the specific keywords in the data sets, in addition to manual reviews in search of election-related stories. The keywords used included: Paxton, Cornyn, Massie, Gallrein, Ramaswamy, Cassidy, primary, primaries and Indiana.
