Media Research Center Study Claims Apple News, Google News Kept Negative El-Sayed Stories Out of Top Feeds

What MRC Found

Since Moody's upgraded Argentina's credit rating and other unrelated stories dominated the week, a separate media study has drawn fresh attention to how tech platforms curate political news. The Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog, published a study on Friday, July 24, claiming Apple News and Google News displayed no negatively framed headlines about Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in their top 20 morning stories after February 10, 2026.

MRC President David Bozell said the group tracked Google News' top morning stories from November 1, 2025 through July 21, 2026, and Apple News from November 3 through July 21. Researchers searched the terms "Michigan," "Abdul" and "El-Sayed," then ran sentiment analysis on relevant headlines, sorting them as negative, neutral or positive, according to the MRC report cited by Fox News.

The group says it identified 104 stories from right-leaning outlets covering El-Sayed's record, statements and policies that never cracked either platform's top feed. MRC also counted a smaller batch of critical stories from left-leaning and other outlets, though the report itself is inconsistent. Fox News noted MRC cited 13 such stories in one section of the report and 16 in another.

The Specific Controversies Left Out

According to Fox News and the podcast series "The Daily News Now!," the buried stories included El-Sayed's campaign appearances alongside streamer Hasan Piker, who has drawn criticism for past comments about the September 11 attacks. El-Sayed has said appearing alongside Piker doesn't mean he endorses those remarks, according to Fox News' reporting on his own response.

Other flagged stories involved El-Sayed's reported 2025 household income of $686,069, which Fox News' "Outnumbered" segment noted is well above Michigan's median household income, and questions about his professional medical credentials. The podcast summaries also referenced his positions on Medicare for All and defunding police, along with a story about El-Sayed smashing a vodka bottle after facing criticism over his beard.

Bozell Draws a Comparison to Maine

In an interview with Sinclair Broadcasting's "The National News Desk," Bozell connected this study to MRC's earlier investigation into Google News coverage of former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who exited that race after a rape allegation from a former girlfriend surfaced amid other controversies. Bozell told Sinclair reporter Geoff Harris that both cases show a pattern: "Time and time again, Google and Apple are cherrypicking from traditionally left-wing, elitist news sources and we can prove that."

When Harris pushed back that some of the flagged articles technically do appear somewhere on the platforms, Bozell clarified that MRC's complaint isn't that Apple and Google deleted stories outright. It's that the platforms' curation choices for the most visible top-feed placements favored mainstream, left-leaning sources over critical reporting, he said.

What the Study Doesn't Establish

MRC reviewed one morning snapshot of each platform's feed, not everything published throughout the day, according to Fox News' own account of the methodology. The report doesn't specify what time the snapshots were taken, where researchers were located, whether they were logged into personalized accounts, or how personalization settings were controlled for.

Apple News and Google News both use algorithms that factor in a user's location, browsing history and account settings. A single logged-out snapshot from one location doesn't necessarily reflect what millions of other users nationwide were seeing on their own personalized feeds. MRC's own numbers inconsistency, 13 versus 16 stories from left-leaning outlets in different parts of the same report, also raises questions about the study's rigor.

None of this proves the opposite either. Nobody has produced Apple's or Google's actual ranking algorithm or internal editorial guidelines to show intent, malice or lack thereof. Neither company had issued a public response to MRC's findings as of this writing, and no regulatory body or lawsuit has been filed over the claims.

The underlying concern MRC is raising isn't fringe: two platforms functioning as the primary news gateway for a huge share of Americans wield enormous influence simply by choosing what shows up first. If that curation systematically favors one kind of coverage over another, voters get a skewed picture without ever knowing it happened. That's a legitimate transparency question regardless of who's doing the complaining.

But a one-day-snapshot methodology, run by a group with an explicit conservative mission, doesn't by itself prove deliberate political suppression as opposed to ordinary algorithmic ranking based on source authority, click-through rates or freshness. Whether El-Sayed's primary against Rep. Haley Stevens produces further scrutiny of these platforms, or whether Apple and Google respond to MRC's findings at all, remains an open question heading into next month's primary.