FTC tells Tim Cook to look into reports Apple News is censoring conservatives

“Recently, there have been reports that Apple News has systematically promoted news articles from left-wing news outlets and suppressed news articles from more conservative publications,” Ferguson wrote in the letter posted to X on Wednesday.

Apple declined to comment on the letter.

The company can legally promote any content it wants to on Apple News, which Ferguson acknowledged.

“We do not have the authority to require Apple or any other firm to take affirmative positions on any political issue, nor to curate news offerings consistent with one ideology or another,” he wrote.

Ferguson’s letter cited a study from the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, that looked at featured stories on Apple News during morning time slots in January.

President Donald Trump shared a New York Post write-up of the study on his Truth Social account early Wednesday.

Apple has so far navigated Trump’s second term fairly well, weathering the early tariff blitz and crackdown on China manufacturing, which included the president’s desire to have iPhones made in the U.S.

Cook hand-delivered a gold-and-glass trophy to Trump in the Oval Office in August as the company pledged another $100 billion to bolster U.S. manufacturing.

According to Section 5 of the FTC Act, the news aggregator could be violating terms if its suppression or promotion “is contrary to consumers’ reasonable expectations such that failure to disclose the ideological favoritism is a material omission.”

Ferguson told Cook to undergo a “comprehensive review” and take corrective action if the Apple News curation is not consistent with the company’s terms of service.