A new AllSides bias analysis found Apple News (Lean Left bias) continued its trend of publishing primarily from left-wing media outlets in 2025, displaying 2% of news articles from outlets on the right, and 50% from outlets on the left. View the full PDF report here.
This is consistent with data from our 2023 analysis, when Apple News curated 1% from outlets on the right and 53% from the left.
Note: Sums do not add up to 100% due to rounding. Lean Right outlets represent 0.6% and Right 1.8%. The Total therefore is 2.4%, which rounds down to 2%.
While users can personalize which outlets appear on their Apple News app, for the purposes of this analysis, AllSides looked explicitly at Apple News’ “Top Stories” and “Trending Stories” sections, which are not personalized for individual users and are curated by Apple’s editors. Apple News states that its editors curate some sections of the app, such as the “Top Stories” and “Trending Stories” sections. Apple explains that because the stories that appear in these sections are hand-selected by editors themselves, they are not affected by users blocking publications.
Apple’s “Top Stories” section displayed 54% outlets on the left and 0% on the right.
Apple News’ “Trending Stories” section displayed 46% from the left, 12% from the Center, and 5% from the right.
Note that this analysis does not investigate whether the political leanings or biases displayed by Apple News and other news aggregators are intentional.
The top 5 news sources appearing on Apple News during the 2025 analysis period were Wall Street Journal (Center), BuzzFeed (Not Rated), Washington Post (Lean Left), HuffPost (Left), and NBC News (Lean Left).
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Most Major News Aggregators Lean Left
Since 2022, AllSides has been auditing major news aggregators for bias. Most news aggregators curate primarily from media outlets with an AllSides Media Bias Rating of Lean Left or Left, and most curate less than 10% of articles from news outlets rated Lean Right or Right.
The AllSides News Aggregator Bias Chart displays bias ratings for aggregators including Google News (Lean Left), Bing News (Lean Left) and Yahoo! News (Lean Left).
- Yahoo News curated 65% of articles from outlets on the left; 5% from the right (2022 AllSides bias analysis)
- Bing News curated 0% of articles from the Right, 83% from the left (2023 AllSides analysis)
- Google News curated 63% of articles from media outlets on the left. The 2023 analysis represented a larger share than in 2022, when 61% of articles on Google News were from liberal outlets. In 2023, 6% of articles were from sources on the right; in 2022, just 3%.
- RealClearPolitics is balanced: 32% of articles were from outlets on the left; 35% from the right.
AllSides will release brand-new analyses of these aggregators soon; make sure to sign up for our newsletter to be among the first to see.
How AllSides Conducted the Apple News Bias Analysis
AllSides collected the top stories displayed on Apple News over the course of a two-week period from October 6–19, 2025, at 10:00am ET each day. This consisted of pulling from the “Top Stories” and “Trending Stories” of the application.
Because the “Top Stories” and “Trending Stories” sections are unaffected by algorithms or personalization, these were the two sections AllSides chose to analyze for this report. The “Top Stories” section appears at the top of the application, and “Trending Stories” often appears under a personalized “For You” section.
AllSides only took the bias of the overall media outlet into account – not the content of the article itself. For example, any article curated from The New York Times (Lean Left) was considered Lean Left, reflecting the outlet’s overall AllSides Media Bias Rating at the time of the analysis.
AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ reflect the average judgment of all Americans, not just a panel of insiders. AllSides balances the input of experts and ordinary people across the political spectrum so that our bias ratings reveal the average judgment of all Americans, not one elite group. We use methods including multi-partisan Editorial Reviews by trained experts and Blind Bias Surveys in which participants rate content without knowing the source. Anyone can sign up to help us rate bias here.
Julie Mastrine is the Director of Communications and Bias Services at AllSides. She has a Lean Right Bias.
Andrew Weinzierl is the Director of Research at AllSides. He has a Lean Left bias.
This piece was reviewed by Clare Ashcraft, Bridging Coordinator and Media Analyst (Center bias).
