In the two days following the anti-ICE church riot in Minneapolis, the Big Four News Apps (Apple News, Google News, MSN and Yahoo News) have all but ignored left-wing agitators disrupting Americans exercising their constitutional right to freely worship their God.
Google News, MSN and Yahoo News suppressed coverage of the anti-ICE radicals who were joined by former CNN anchor Don Lemon. Apple News was the only one of the Big Four News Apps to run any morning headlines about the riot. Out of the top 40 stories on Apple News from Jan. 19- Jan. 20, 2026, there were a scant two stories about the church agitators, both published on Jan. 20. 
As Americans increasingly get their news from the Big Four News Apps, their biased coverage distorts people’s understanding of the turmoil unfolding in places like Minneapolis.
In the two days following the riot, three of the four news apps refused to run a single headline about the church riot in their top 20 morning headlines. The three apps had a combined 120 opportunities to acknowledge the radical storming of a church during its weekly worship service. Instead, the three digital gatekeepers actively worked to shield extremist agitators from any coverage.
In the two days following the riot, Google News ran four headlines about a train crash in Spain that killed at least 39 people, and no less than 12 headlines related to Trump’s statements about Greenland. MSN and Yahoo News focused heavily on sports, entertainment and weather stories, running a total of five headlines about Greenland and none about Spain.
Apple News alone displayed two stories on the Minnesota church agitators, but even when it did cover the story, it pushed leftist outlet The Washington Post with a headline that squarely blamed President Donald Trump for the aggressive disruption of a Sunday morning church service with the headline, “Anti-ICE protest at Minnesota church is latest flash point over Trump’s crackdown.” Apple News also ran a headline from British outlet the BBC which acknowledged that the riot may have violated the law but simultaneously downplayed the severity of the incident. “US officials probing Minnesota ICE protest that disrupted church service,” the headline read.
The Big Four News Apps all continuously fail to provide ideologically diverse news options that readers can depend on to stay informed of the most important issues of the day. Despite this failure, news aggregators, or platforms that gather articles from multiple media sources into a single place, are a growing source for people to get their news. According to a report from the Reuters Institute, “engagement with traditional media sources such as TV, print, and news websites continues to fall, while dependence on social media, video platforms, and online aggregators grows,” particularly in the United States.
Methodology: During the time period Jan. 19-20 2026, MRC researchers examined the top 20 AllSides-rated news stories featured on Apple News, Google News, MSN and Yahoo News each day at 8:30 AM ET. Using AllSides media bias ratings, which classify outlets as “left,” “lean left,” “center,” “lean right” or “right,” researchers assessed the ideological slant presented by the Big Four News Apps and analyzed the results.
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