Major news aggregators—including Google News, Apple News, Bing News, and Yahoo News—overwhelmingly favour left-leaning outlets in the content they present to users, a new media audit claims.
The study, conducted by the U.S.-based group AllSides, found that the imbalance is most pronounced in non-personalised sections of these services—such as curated homepages or trending feeds—where content is selected independently of individual user preferences.
According to the report, just 1% of articles in these sections on Google News came from right-leaning outlets, compared to 73% from left-leaning sources. Apple News showed a similar pattern, with around 2% of content from the right and roughly 50% from the left. Bing News and Yahoo News followed the same trend, with conservative sources accounting for 5% and 2% of content respectively, versus 72% and 53% from left-leaning outlets.
The audit, carried out between June and December 2025, focused on curated sections of each platform that are not shaped by personalisation algorithms. AllSides said it used a multi-partisan panel of reviewers alongside blind surveys of American readers to classify media outlets and assess bias.
Julie Mastrine, director of AllSides’ media bias rating system, said the scale of the platforms amplifies the impact of editorial imbalance. “The impact of one-sided media on our society is both sinister and immeasurable,” she said, warning that limited exposure to competing viewpoints could affect how users form political opinions.
The report assigns each aggregator a “bias ratio,” with negative scores indicating a leftward lean. Google News recorded the strongest score at -1.62, followed by Apple News (-1.57), Bing News (-1.55) and Yahoo News (-1.55). Other platforms, including SmartNews and NewsBreak, were rated closer to the centre.
The findings have prompted debate among media analysts. Mark Grabowski, a digital ethics expert at Adelphi University, described the results as “damning,” arguing they challenge long-standing claims by tech companies that their platforms function as neutral distributors of information.
Technology companies rejected the conclusions. A Google News spokesperson said the study was based on “arbitrary ratings and a tiny two-week snapshot,” and stressed that its service is largely personalised. Apple said its trending sections are generated automatically based on readership, while Yahoo News said it works with a broad range of outlets across the political spectrum.
