Overview
- The Media Research Center released an analysis on Aug. 20–21, 2026 that says the outlets most often promoted on Apple News and Google News whose editorial boards issue presidential endorsements backed Democratic nominees 31 times and Republican nominees zero times from 1988 through 2024.
- MRC reached the 31‑0 figure by logging the top 20 stories in each platform’s morning feed over set windows between November 2025 and July 2026, identifying the most‑frequented publishers and compiling those publishers’ presidential endorsement histories from public archives.
- Google has formally disputed MRC’s methods and declined to give a new comment on the latest report, while Apple and Microsoft offered limited or no comment; the finding follows an earlier February FTC warning letter to Apple about Apple News curation practices.
- Independent work by AllSides and other MRC trackers show similar patterns of few right‑leaning sources in aggregator feeds, but critics and the platforms say using long‑run editorial endorsements as a proxy does not measure the political slant of individual stories or prove platform intent.
- The debate raises practical stakes for users and regulators because Apple News and Google News are default gateways on billions of devices, and the reports increase the likelihood of closer FTC or congressional scrutiny of how aggregators rank and promote publishers.