You know that news feed on your iPhone? The one that shows up when you swipe right, the one that looks like a neutral summary of the day’s headlines? It’s not neutral. It’s not algorithmic. And it’s not random.

It’s curated. By humans. Led by one woman. And the numbers just exposed what millions of iPhone users have suspected for years.

The Gatekeeper

Her name is Lauren Kern. In 2017, Apple hired her as editor-in-chief of Apple News — the app that comes preinstalled on every iPhone in America. Before Apple, Kern was the executive editor of New York Magazine and deputy editor of the New York Times Magazine. Two of the most reliably liberal publications in American media. That’s her background. That’s her lens. And that’s the lens through which over 100 million monthly users receive their news.

The New York Times profiled Kern in 2018 and called her “one of the most powerful figures in English-language media.” They described her team as “former journalists” who are “selecting the news that tens of millions of people will read.”

Selecting. Not aggregating. Not algorithmically surfacing. Selecting. A small group of former journalists from left-leaning publications, choosing which stories 100 million people see every day.

“We put so much care and thought into our curation,” Kern told the Times. “It’s seen by a lot of people, and we take that responsibility really seriously.”

They take it seriously all right. Seriously left.

The Numbers

The Media Research Center — a conservative watchdog — examined every story featured on Apple News throughout January 2026. Six hundred and twenty stories. Here’s the breakdown.

440 came from left-leaning outlets. 180 came from centrist outlets. Zero came from right-leaning outlets.

Zero. Not a handful. Not a token conservative voice buried on page six. Zero. Out of 620 curated stories in an entire month, not a single one came from a right-leaning source.

That’s not curation. That’s editorial censorship dressed up as a news feed. And it’s happening on a device that 1.2 billion people use worldwide — preinstalled, default-enabled, and presented as a comprehensive news experience.

The FTC Steps In

The MRC study caught the attention of FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, who sent a letter directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Ferguson warned that Apple News could be violating Section 5 of the FTC Act — which prohibits unfair or deceptive practices.

“The First Amendment protects the speech of Big Tech firms,” Ferguson wrote. “But the First Amendment has never extended its protection to material misrepresentations made to consumers, nor does it immunize speakers from conduct that Congress has deemed unfair under the FTC Act, even if that conduct involves speech.”

Translation: you can have an editorial opinion, but if you’re presenting a politically curated feed as a neutral news product, that’s potentially deceptive. And deception is the FTC’s business.

Apple and Kern didn’t respond to requests for comment. Silence — the universal language of people who know the numbers don’t look good.

The Invisible Wall

Here’s what makes Apple News different from CNN or the New York Times. When you turn on CNN, you know what you’re getting. When you subscribe to the Times, you understand the editorial perspective. You’re making a choice.

Apple News doesn’t present itself as a choice. It presents itself as the news. It’s the default. It’s preinstalled. It opens with a swipe. There’s no disclaimer that says “curated by a team of former liberal magazine editors.” There’s no label that says “right-leaning sources excluded.” It looks like a comprehensive feed. It behaves like a comprehensive feed. And millions of people trust it as a comprehensive feed.

But it’s not. It’s a filter. And the filter has a very specific shape — one that lets everything from the left through and blocks everything from the right. Not most things. Everything. Zero stories from right-leaning outlets in a month of coverage.

Imagine if your local newspaper delivered 620 articles in a month and every single one came from the same political perspective. You’d cancel your subscription. But Apple News isn’t a subscription you chose. It’s a feature you were given — and most people never question who’s deciding what they see.

The Power Nobody Voted For

Lauren Kern wasn’t elected. She wasn’t confirmed by the Senate. She didn’t run a campaign promising to serve as the information gatekeeper for 100 million Americans. She was hired by a tech company to curate a news feed, and through the sheer reach of the iPhone, she became — in the Times’ own words — “one of the most powerful figures in English-language media.”

That power is invisible. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t wear a party logo. It just quietly shapes what a hundred million people think is happening in the world — every morning, every lunch break, every evening scroll before bed.

And now we know exactly how that power is being used. 440 to zero. Left to right. Every month. On every iPhone.

The FTC is asking questions. The study is public. The numbers are undeniable. And Apple’s response so far is silence.

That tells you everything the news feed won’t.