Microsoft’s news aggregator included articles last month from 70 online publications — but only two of those lean to the right.
MSN.com, a perennial top 10 news website, promoted stories from 68 outlets on the left or center in its top 20 morning daily stories in February, while its right-leaning headlines came only from Fox News and Fox Business, according to a report from the conservative Media Research Center.
What’s more, most of the Fox articles were celebrity, lifestyle and feature stories with no political angle, such as a Feb. 28 interview with country singer LeAnn Rimes and a Feb. 26 piece about actress Jane Seymour posing in a skimpy bathing suit for her 75th birthday.
The center said that MSN “camouflages its censorship behind a thin veil of human-interest stories,” comparing the site to Apple News, another popular news-curation site that drew a Federal Trade Commission warning last month after failing to include a right-of-center source for 100 days.
“MSN is attempting to drive the political narrative by cherry-picking the outlets that hate President Trump the most,” said MRC President David Bozell in a Tuesday statement. “Somebody needs to explain why the number-one cable news outlet in America is being sent to the back of the bus.”
He referred to the Feb. 10 letter from FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson to Apple CEO Tim Cook warning that attempts to “suppress or promote news articles” based on the political tilt of the publication may violate the FTC Act.
“MSN might think it can avoid scrutiny from federal regulators by adding a few stories from Fox, but it is not going to work,” said Mr. Bozell. “Consumer harm is the same, regardless of how you dress it up.”
The MRC Free Speech America report found that MSN ran 560 articles in its morning top 20 in February. Of those, 493 were published by outlets rated on their political leanings by AllSides, an independent media-bias watchdog.
The data showed that 270 articles, or 55%, were from left-leaning outlets. Another 166, or 34%, came from sources rated center-right by AllSides.
Fifty-five articles linked to Fox News Digital and two were from Fox Business, for a total of 55, or 12%. Both sources are ranked as right-of-center outlets.
That’s certainly more than Apple News, which inched up from 0% to 2% in February after going 100 days without promoting a right-of-center source, but the MRC said that MSN has only created the “illusion of balance.”
Only 20 of the 57 Fox stories chosen by MSN dealt with hard-hitting news, prompting the MRC to conclude that “the digital news gatekeeper simultaneously relies on Fox while trivializing it.”
“Fox was the lone right-leaning source in MSN’s top 20 morning editions,” the report said. “Even then, MSN primarily reserved prime placements for Fox’s Hollywood news, crime coverage and sports coverage.”
Meanwhile, conservative websites like the New York Post, Daily Mail, Breitbart, Newsmax and The Washington Times were “completely locked out of MSN’s top placements for the entire month,” the center said.
The Washington Times has reached out to MSN for comment.
This is how failing leftist news operations stay in business. pic.twitter.com/jWVwzsY43P
— Free Speech America (@FreeSpeechAmer) March 10, 2026
MSN is one of the Big Four news apps, along with Apple News, Yahoo News and Google News, that drive enormous traffic to news publications, wielding outsized influence in the online media market.
MSN is preloaded on personal computers, while Apple News comes automatically on all U.S. iPhones and Google is preloaded on Android phones, giving the aggregation sites a huge advantage over traditional news publications.
“Because MSN is the hard-wired default for Windows and the Edge browser, Microsoft is force-feeding this lopsided reality to millions of users who never opted into a leftist echo chamber,” said the center.
The PressGazette’s monthly English-language news-website rankings released Wednesday showed MSN ranked third in February, ahead of Google News in seventh place and Yahoo News in 14th place.
The PressGazette’s rankings don’t include Apple News, which is considered an app versus a website.
In 2020, Apple News reached 125 million free and paid active monthly users, which would place it in the top 10 if it were classified as a website, said Mr. Bozell.
