Media Research Center (MRC) President David Bozell joined Lara Trump, host of the Right View Podcast, on Thursday to talk about how the elitist media – despite historically low levels of trust and viewers – are strengthening their grip on America’s news narrative.
Bozell said it feels like Americans are “watching two different movies,” getting two entirely different versions of reality. To understand the phenomenon, he asked the MRC staff a simple question: if trust in elitist media is collapsing, why are left-wing outlets such as The New York Times and CNN still drawing massive online audiences?
If the elitist media's ratings are in the toilet, how do their websites still get millions of hits per month?
— Media Research Center (@theMRC) January 30, 2026
The New York Times, CNN, ABC, etc. have migrated to the Big Four News Apps — it's just regurgitated left-wing opinion masquerading as news.@DavidBozell @LaraLeaTrump pic.twitter.com/tsqV44AQdL
The answer lies in the quiet power of the Four Big News Apps: Apple, Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Using a newly developed proprietary tool, the MRC Digital News Tracker, Bozell explained that the MRC Free Speech America Team now documents how these Big Four News Apps are overwhelmingly promoting stories from leftist news sites, including The New York Times, Newsweek, CNN, and The Washington Post, while systematically excluding right-leaning news outlets.
It's kind of a miracle the conservative media ecosystem does so well without any help from the four biggest news apps in America today.@DavidBozell @LaraLeaTrump pic.twitter.com/P1aMNkHLLq
— Media Research Center (@theMRC) January 30, 2026
Between the four of them, the Big Four News Apps reach about 550 million Americans each month.
“MSN is pre-loaded on virtually every personal computer in America,” Bozell noted. “If you have an Android, Google News is pre-loaded on your phone. If you have an iPhone, Apple News is pre-loaded on it. Yahoo is often incorrectly dismissed as a relic of the internet past, but if you have a Yahoo email domain, if you're checking your fantasy football, if you're going on Yahoo Finance, you are getting Yahoo headlines.”
For many Americans, the Big Four News Apps are the news.
“The net effect of this is a false mirror, where the left-wing narrative The New York Times and CNN put out is considered to be the consensus in the country.”
Watch Bozell’s full interview with Trump here.
