FTC calls out Apple for slanting its news app to the left

A federal regulator has warned Apple Inc. to stop suppressing conservative outlets from its popular News app.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook, alerting him to reports that Apple News “has systematically promoted news articles from left-wing news outlets and suppressed news articles from more conservative publications.”

He urged Mr. Cook to conduct “a comprehensive review” of Apple News and “to take corrective actions swiftly” if a left-wing slant is discovered.

Apple is a private company, but the FTC has some oversight of “speech-related” products. Mr. Ferguson told Mr. Cook that a leftward lean to Apple News may violate the FTC Act, a law dating back to 1914 that authorizes the FTC to prevent unfair methods of competition and deceptive acts in commerce.

Apple News was launched in 2015 for iPhones and iPads. It sends users an aggregation of news articles, some of which are based on their interests.

Mr. Ferguson’s letter followed a new report by the conservative-leaning Media Research Center that analyzed articles promoted by Apple News in January.

The center’s analysis found Apple News did not include any articles from conservative-leaning outlets in the top 20 articles of its morning editions from Jan. 1 through Jan. 31. The analysis found that, out of 620 top stories featured on Apple News during January, “not a single one was from a right-leaning media outlet.”

Instead, Apple News favored stories from The Washington Post, The Associated Press, NBC News, The Guardian, The New York Times, Apple, NPR, Politico, USA Today and Bloomberg News.

The headlines featured in those stories, MRC found, focused on President Trump’s foreign policy and immigration policies and cast them in a negative light.

The analysis used an example from NBC News that read, “Unnerved by Trump, U.S. allies are making nice with China.”

The Washington Times reached out to Apple.

Apple News reaches a massive audience.

The News app is pre-installed on iPhones and iPads and reaches 125 million monthly active users.

News outlets featured on Thursday included the Minnesota Star Tribune, The Guardian, The Washington Post, the BBC, CBS News and USA Today.

In his letter, Mr. Ferguson said the FTC is not authorized to require Apple to curate news a certain way, but warned the company suppressing or promoting news articles “based on the perceived ideological or political viewpoint of the article or publication” could violate the company’s own terms of service and reasonable expectation of consumers.