FTC is mad about lack of conservative propaganda in news apps

Journalism is in crisis right now, as the current US administration wages a culture war against the progressive trends that have been leading America and its allies into our modern era. For well over a decade now, conservative movements have been trying to muddy the waters with baseless accusations of “fake news” against the most venerated institutions of journalism — while ironically, failing to acknowledge their own propaganda as such. And now the FTC is threatening Apple News because hardly anyone actually wants to read that junk.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson posted a copy of letter he sent to Tim Cook on X yesterday afternoon. There, he cites reports that “Apple News has chosen not to feature a single article from an American conservative-leaning news source” in recent months. If it sounds utterly impossible to your ears that not a single one was available on Apple News, well, congratulations on having more sense than the chair of the FTC, because that is a lie.

At best, it’s splitting hairs over the meaning of “feature,” because the report Ferguson refers to is incredibly narrow in its scope and utterly flawed in its execution. As Apple Insider points out, it’s only looking at the top 20 lists in Apple News, and only at specific times in the morning. Not only are conservative voices like Fox News easily available on Apple’s platform, but they also regularly feature on such lists — just not necessarily at the right time of day for this cherry-picked study.

While the FTC has no business telling a company like Apple (or any news aggregator) what stories it has to feature, Ferguson takes a different tact here, suggesting that Apple is violating its own terms by misrepresenting the service it’s providing to users — and that’s something the FTC could feel empowered to do something about.

The current US administration has not been shy at all about its attempt to destroy journalism as we know it, replacing it with ugly, hateful, jingoistic content, and it’s chilling to see Apple targeted in this manner. Even if you prefer Google News or another aggregator, make no mistake: They’re coming for everyone and won’t stop until extremist voices like Breitbart are being shoved in your face.

Apple News is already giving its users what they want. The problem isn’t any misrepresentation with its terms of service. As Stephen Colbert so sharply put it at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” All the complaining in the world isn’t going to change that, and the sooner the FTC accepts it, the better.