The alleged bias of Apple News: Ex-liberal mag editor tasked to handpick stories for millions of iPhone users

Critics are taking a bite out of the Apple News app, fueling questions over who's overseeing its alleged bias.

A recent study found that Apple News, the popular news aggregator which comes preinstalled on every iPhone in America, overwhelmingly promotes content from liberal outlets.

In 2017, Apple tapped liberal magazine veteran Lauren Kern to be the app's editor-in-chief.

Kern, who previously served as the executive editor of New York Magazine and deputy editor of New York Times Magazine, was part of a glowing 2018 feature from The New York Times which reported that she leads a group of former journalists who are "selecting the news that tens of millions of people will read."

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"We put so much care and thought into our curation," Kern told the Times in 2018. "It’s seen by a lot of people, and we take that responsibility really seriously."

Because of the tremendous reach of the Apple News app, the Times reported that Kern "quietly become one of the most powerful figures in English-language media." In 2020, Apple boasted that its app "draws over 100 million monthly active users in the US, UK, Australia and Canada."

The Times declared Apple News had "so far avoided controversy" because it uses humans such as Kern to curate the news, while its Silicon Valley peers relied on machines and algorithms. But nearly eight years later, Kern and Apple News were hit with a study questioning their impartiality.

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The Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, examined the content featured on Apple News throughout January. Of 620 stories shared between Jan. 1 and Jan. 31, 440 originated from outlets rated as left-leaning, while 180 originated from centrist outlets. Zero originated from right-leaning outlets, according to the study.

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The study caught the attention of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew Ferguson, who sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook warning that Apple News could be in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices.

"The First Amendment protects the speech of Big Tech firms. But the First Amendment has never extended its protection to material misrepresentations made to consumers, nor does it immunize speakers from conduct that Congress has deemed unfair under the FTC Act, even if that conduct involves speech," Ferguson told Cook.

Apple and Kern didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.