Apple News Continues Pushing Left Under New CEO Ternus

As Apple's new CEO John Ternus continued into his second month at the helm of the tech titan, Apple News persisted in pushing its left-leaning slant, and even its tiny slice of right-leaning content is often negative toward Republicans. 

Through the first 27 days of October, the news app has published 504 stories. Only 11 (2%) came from right-leaning outlets, while 339 (67%) were from left-leaning outlets, like The Washington Post, NPR, and The Atlantic. The headlines of five of the 11 stories from right-leaning outlets were negatively framed against President Donald Trump's administration and Republicans.

MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider pointed out the problem: "For months the media has been claiming that Trump is on the ballot for the midterm elections. Given that Apple News has run only eleven stories from right-leaning outlets in October leading up to the election and nearly half were framed negatively against Trump, it's apparent how Apple under John Ternus hopes the election turns out."

After Ternus took over as the new Apple CEO following Tim Cook's departure on Sept. 1, the tech titan news aggregator's rampant anti-conservative bias got worse. An MRC analysis of the data revealed that the first month under Ternus saw Apple News fall from over a dozen stories from right-leaning outlets in August to a pathetic three in September. 

MRC's key findings:

• Apple News has featured over 30 times more stories from left-leaning outlets (339 total) compared to right-leaning outlets (11 total) thus far in October, favoring outlets most prone to attack Trump, conservatives and Republicans. 
• Five of the 11 stories from right-leaning outlets were framed negatively toward Trump, his administration or Republicans.
• Apple News's news imbalance favoring the left was consistent with the strong left-wing bias under previous CEO Tim Cook. In August, Cook's last month, Apple News promoted 381 stories (65%) from left-leaning outlets, 191 stories (33%) from center outlets and 13 stories (2%) from right-leaning outlets.

Apple News featured three times more stories from right-leaning outlets from September to October

Since MRC began tracking the morning top stories on Apple News in November 2025, the news aggregator has consistently been more radical and anti-conservative than its news aggregator competitors (Google News and Microsoft's MSN).

MRC previously reported that it took Apple News 100 days to publish a single story from a right-leaning outlet. From Nov. 6, 2025 through Feb. 12, 2026, Apple News promoted over 1,300 stories from left-leaning outlets, but not even one from a right-leaning outlet. 

Only after the MRC Special Report on the blatant bias went viral following FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson's letter to Apple's then CEO Cook about its clear left-wing bias did Apple News finally feature a single story from a right-leaning outlet. Thereafter, Apple News only modestly increased featured articles from right-leaning outlets, moving from zero to 2%, an MRC analysis unveiled on March 5.

Nearly half of stories from right-leaning outlets so far in October were negative toward the right

Eleven stories (2%) of the AllSides-rated stories featured were from right-leaning outlets, but nearly half of them were negative toward the Trump administration and Republicans. This leaves Apple News just as biased under Ternus as it was under Tim Cook. The negative stories included:

• "Trump-backed senator admits GOP faces nightmare scenario in state Republicans haven't lost in 90 years," by Fox News, promoted Oct. 27.
• "Battleground Republicans break with Trump on key issues in final midterm sprint," by Fox News, promoted Oct. 14.
• "Trump drops Republican Senator's phone number in social post over fury on stalled bill," by Fox News, promoted Oct. 4.
• "US military archbishop urges Catholic soldiers to refuse involvement in Army firing squad execution," by Fox News, promoted Oct. 13. 
• "Trump sidelines sweeping Russia sanctions as GOP allies warn pressure on Putin is slipping," by Fox News, promoted Oct. 24.

Methodology: During the time period Oct. 1 - Oct. 27, 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.