Not the Headlines! Extra! Taking a bite out of the sour Apple

The Listening Tube presents not the headlines extra. I'm Bob Woodley from The Listening Tube. A lot of people, more of us than should, rely on quick headlines that flash on our social media apps to keep up with some of what's going on in the world. Some of us might read a few paragraphs in if it's something interesting or written in a way that keeps you reading in order to find the answer to the question the headline posed, only to find out there is no answer in the story. Either way, we don't learn very much, but we think we did because something or someone else just summarized it for us. A quick example that you may have seen recently concerns monthly job numbers. Last month, U.S. jobs added fell short of expectations, and the media was quick to declare that the president's economic policies were failing. Then this month, job creation nearly doubled expectations, and I saw a headline that said, Here's why skyrocketing job numbers are bad. So it's bad if they fall short, and it's bad if they do great. Some people just aren't happy unless they're miserable. And they take it upon themselves to make sure you're miserable too. Except you're not happy when you're miserable. Huh. I wonder why they do that. Keep listening, and I may or may not answer the question. There is a particular group among us that may be more miserable than the rest because of an intentional effort by one of the largest companies in the world. Apple. And everyone who has an iPhone is a potential victim of the manufactured misery. iPhone users might just be the most miserable people in the United States because of an app that's included with your phone. Apple News. If you use Apple News to stay informed, you're only getting half of the story, and it's the sad or angry or fanatical extremist left-wing side. A study by the Media Research Center of News Stories shared by Apple News took a look at which news sources Apple went to the most to get the stories they shared. They checked the app basically twice a day during most of January and compiled 620 stories from a variety of news sources. Unfortunately, in this case, variety doesn't mean diversity. Of the 620 stories, none came from news sources one might consider right or right leaning. Fifty-four came from the Wall Street Journal, which some might consider slightly right, but most consider neutral. 440 of them came from left or left-leaning sources, like the Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC News, The Guardian, and NPR. Now you might be thinking, but Bob, that's just the algorithms giving the user what they want. And normally, you would be correct. But that's not how Apple News does it, according to the iPhone User's Guide. Apple has human editors who decide what stories to share with Apple News users. An Apple spokesperson said the app provides access to thousands of publications, including Fox News, The Washington Examiner, the New York Post, among others, and users can customize their feed by following or blocking specific sources or even topics. The Media Research Center's president claims Apple's right-wing options are almost non-existent. For the record, the Media Research Center seems to be right-leaning, but that doesn't change what Apple News does. The MRC study goes on to add that Apple News, as of this week, has gone 96 consecutive days without citing a conservative news outlet. And the last time they did, it was a story from London's The Telegraph. My statistics indicate that about 17% of people who listen to the listening tube do so on an iPhone. And now I feel sorry for those of you who do. I hope you recognize how you're not only subject to being manipulated by the media, as most of us are, but you are subject to being manipulated at another level of the media landscape when your iPhone news aggregator is also run by people who are trying to manipulate you. And it just might be working. Does reading the stories on your Apple News app make you angry? Are you miserable? Maybe it's because you're only getting bad news. It's not that there isn't any good news out there. There's plenty of it, and not just human interest stories or lost dogs being found. I mean good political, economic, and social news. Things happening in America that you can feel happy about. But if you're an iPhone user, you might not be getting the message. I have a Samsung myself, I have the Associated Press app on it, so I can get all the left leaning news I want. I follow ABC News on Facebook, so I'm exposed to left leaning news there too. I also read CNN's Twitter feed for even more left-wing slant to the news. I don't have any app for any conservative news organizations at all. But like most Americans, I do watch Fox News, but not the primetime talking heads. I like Gutfeld, John Roberts and Sandra Smith are good. But what's important is that the news doesn't make me mad, because I see the folly in the way the left presents it, and I know it's meant to make me mad or fool me into thinking something that's totally wrong. If all you get is the news from the left, and their mission is to keep you pissed off, then you're gonna be pissed off by the news, even if your day-to-day life is getting better every day. I'm Bob Woodley from the Listening Tube. Get a lot more content from the listening tube with Bob Woodley Podcast.