SmartNews

• SmartNews More Balanced in Dec. 2025 Analysis
• SmartNews Bias Rated Lean Left in Oct.-Nov 2023 Analysis

SmartNews Moves from Lean Left to Center: Dec. 2025 Analysis

An AllSides analysis of SmartNews conducted in December 2025 found that the news aggregator displayed more sources with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ on the left and Center than the right. This resulted in AllSides moving SmartNews' overall bias rating from the Lean Left category (-1.3) to Center (-0.79).

The aggregator appears to have gotten more balanced since our 2023 bias analysis: there was a 27% decrease in sources on the left, a 2% increase in Center sources, and 6% increase in sources on the right. 

Of 280 articles evaluated over a two-week period, SmartNews displayed:

• 29% outlets on the left
• 34% outlets rated Center
• 8% outlets on the right
• 30% outlets not rated by AllSides.

Note: Percentages are rounded to whole numbers; totals may not sum exactly due to rounding.

Breaking down the bias ratings further:

• 7% of outlets shown on SmartNews were from outlets rated Left
• 22% Lean Left
• 34% Center
• 2% Right
• 5% Lean Right

The top five sources appearing the most often were The Hill (Center bias), Reuters (Center bias), ABC News (Lean Left bias), CBS News (Lean Left bias), and CNN (Lean Left bias).

AllSides’ analysis also looked at four sections of the SmartNews application: “Top news,” “U.S.,” “World,” and “Politics.” A total of 70 articles per section were collected.

A breakdown of bias by section is as follows (ranked by percent on the left):

• “Top news” section: 44% on the left, 13% Center, 6% on the right
• “Politics section: 33% on the left, 59% Center, 9% on the right
• “U.S.” section: 29% on the left, 33% Center, 7% on the right
• “World” section: 9% on the left, 33% Center, 9% on the right

SmartNews Bias Rated Lean Left in Oct.-Nov 2023 Analysis

In October–November 2023, an AllSides bias analysis of SmartNews found a Lean Left bias. AllSides found the top news sources on Smartnews were 5% Left-rated, 51% Lean Left-rated, 32% Center-rated, 1% Lean Right-rated, 1% Right-rated, and 11% not rated by AllSides. 

In this analysis, AllSides included SmartNews’ “Politics”, “U.S.”, “World”, and “SmartTake” sections over a two-week period. 

In the “Politics” section of the app, 70% of sources were on the left, 11% were in the center, 0% on the right, and 19% were not rated.

In the “U.S.” section of the SmartNews app, 30% of sources were on the left, 59% in the center, 1% on the right, and 10% not rated. 

In the “World” section of the app, 1% of sources were on the left, 99% were in the center, and 0% were on the right.

The “SmartTake” section displayed 71% of sources on the left, 14% in the center, 3% on the right and 11% not rated. 

The top five news sources across SmartNews sections were ABC News (Lean Left), USA Today (Lean Left), DW (Center), Associated Press (Lean Left), and Evening Standard (Center). No sources on the right were among the top 10 outlets displayed on SmartNews’ sections.

Under the Politics tab of SmartNews, there is a feature called “News From All Sides,” which allows users to see articles about a specific topic or news story sorted in three groups, from liberal to conservative. (Important Note: this feature is not connected in any way with AllSides Technologies, Inc.). Although the “News From All Sides” feature may indicate an interest in presenting balanced news, SmartNews overall displays far less news from Right and Lean Right-rated sources. 

Learn more about the AllSides SmartNews Bias Analysis™ and get full results here.

As of 2024, AllSides had analyzed the bias of multiple news aggregators and found most of them Lean Left.