The Watchdog with David Bozell

For years, Big Tech has insisted its news products are neutral. Apple News and Google News are simply giving Americans the news, they tell us.

Our research tells a very different story.

And now, The New York Post is sounding the alarm.

In a blistering editorial responding to the Media Research Center’s latest study, the Post declared: “The fix is in.” Its editorial board called our findings “fresh proof of deep bias” and said they provide “strong grounds for Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to turn up the heat.”

The Post’s reaction is exactly the kind of impact your support makes possible.

MRC examined the news organizations most prominently featured by Apple News and Google News and looked at their presidential endorsements going all the way back to 1988.

The result is stunning. 

Over 10 presidential elections, the publications favored by Apple and Google endorsed Democrats for president 31 times.

Republicans?

Zero.

Not once.

Microsoft’s MSN was hardly better. Its five most-promoted news organizations went 25-2 for Democrats over Republicans.

Numbers like 31-0 and 25-2 help explain why Americans so often appear to be watching two completely different movies. We are not simply disagreeing about the news. Millions of Americans are being shown an entirely different version of it.

The problem is much larger than presidential endorsements. Apple, Google and Microsoft have enormous power over which news Americans see in the first place.

As MRC’s Dan Schneider told the Post, nearly half of voting-age Americans own an iPhone, and Apple News comes pre-installed. Millions of Americans are being presented with news selected by Apple before they ever choose a newspaper, turn on a television, or search for a story themselves.

Most have no idea how lopsided the system is.

MRC has expanded the fight because the stakes are so high.

We already monitor media bias. We already monitor censorship. Now we are monitoring distribution.

Who gets promoted? Who gets buried? Which stories reach millions of Americans? Which stories effectively disappear?

MRC is exposing the answers with hard data Big Tech cannot easily dismiss.

And people in positions to force change are paying attention.

Earlier this year, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson called on Apple to conduct a “comprehensive review” of Apple News and urged the company to take corrective action if its practices do not match the representations it makes to consumers.

Now the New York Post is citing MRC’s research and demanding even greater scrutiny from Congress and the FTC.

Change begins when evidence becomes impossible to ignore.

MRC does the research. We expose what is happening. The national media amplifies our findings. Government leaders take notice. Suddenly, companies as powerful as Apple and Google have questions to answer.

The Post concluded its editorial with a warning: If Apple, Google and the other news aggregators cannot demonstrate they have corrected the imbalance, “Washington may have no choice but to step in.”

Now we have pressure.

And with the midterm elections approaching, we are not letting up.

Thank you for standing with MRC and making our work possible. Together, we are exposing a system operating with far too little scrutiny for far too long, and we are forcing the people who control America’s information pipelines to answer for it.

Take it easy,David Bozell
President