Yahoo’s AI-powered news tool features a disproportionately small number of articles from conservative outlets, according to an analysis released Thursday by the Media Research Center (MRC), a conservative watchdog organization. The study found that over a three-month period, only 3% of the articles featured in Yahoo’s “Yahoo 100” feed originated from right-leaning news sources.
The review, which covered articles from May through July, examined 1,218 articles in the Yahoo 100 feed. Of these, approximately 70% were from outlets classified as left-leaning, while only 35 articles, or 3%, came from right-leaning sources such as The Post, Fox News, or The Telegraph. The MRC has previously scrutinized other news aggregators, including Apple News, Google, and MSN, for perceived bias.
Yahoo describes the “Yahoo 100” feed as a tool that “uses AI to identify emerging stories and generate summaries” to offer “a real-time snapshot of what the internet is talking about.” The MRC criticized this claim, with MRC President David Bozell stating, “Yahoo claiming its new trending feed reflects genuine cultural conversations across the internet is a total sham.” Bozell added that these platforms are “actively rigging the news feed to suppress conservative voices and insulate millions of readers in a left-wing echo chamber.”
The MRC also noted that Yahoo 100 incorporates content from “Yahoo Scout,” an AI tool built using Anthropic’s Claude model, which has also faced allegations of bias. Yahoo states that Scout utilizes Microsoft Bing’s grounding API to ensure its AI-generated responses are “informed by authoritative sources from across the open web.” The MRC countered that the term “authoritative sources” is often used to justify censoring media outlets that do not align with a left-leaning narrative.
To conduct its analysis, the MRC’s researchers reviewed the top 20 articles on the Yahoo 100 feed daily. They relied on media bias ratings from AllSides, an organization that uses a multi-partisan panel and public surveys to assess media bias. A previous AllSides study in April also reported that Apple News, Google News, Yahoo, and Microsoft Bing displayed a left-wing bias in their aggregated news feeds. At that time, a Yahoo News spokesperson asserted that the company partners with a wide array of outlets, including right-leaning ones.
The MRC’s previous work, notably its February report on Apple News’ perceived exclusion of right-leaning outlets, gained national attention. That report led to a warning letter from FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson to Apple CEO Tim Cook, cautioning that the company might be violating consumer protection laws. Representatives for Yahoo, Anthropic, and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.