As he wrestles with his growing unpopularity, Donald Trump and his allies in Washington are now targeting Apple in their push to bring media companies to heel.
On Thursday, CNBC reported on how the Federal Trade Commission is pressuring Apple over allegations that the company is suppressing conservative content on its Apple News platform. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook demanding an investigation into the claim of anti-conservative bias, which originated from a right-wing organization called the Media Research Center.
For background: The MRC was founded by L. Brent Bozell, Trump’s current U.S. ambassador to South Africa and a man whose organizations have an extensive history of pressuring the federal government to impose conservative views on media companies. The MRC’s accusations have coincided with the Trump administration’s efforts to meddle with the media, as we saw last year when FCC Chairman Brendan Carr went after a California radio station after it broadcast federal immigration agents’ live locations.
And there’s no question that meddling is what’s happening here with Apple News. Even if one were to take the MRC’s allegations as true — a foolish idea on its face — the purported political bent of a media platform isn’t a matter the federal government has any business regulating or trifling with.
And yet, this episode joins a growing list of MAGA-backed efforts in recent years to impose the conservative movement’s worldview on American media companies and the independent press alike. Apple, in fact, has already acquiesced to this illiberal pressure by banning apps used to notify people about immigration operations.
In addition, we’ve seen the Trump administration arrest journalists. We’ve seen Trump defy a law passed by Congress banning TikTok and then personally involve himself in a sale of the app’s U.S. operations — in part to one of his political allies. The sale came after the president said that he’d like the app’s algorithm to be “100% MAGA.” Trump himself has lobbed numerous lawsuits against media companies — suits that credible legal experts have broadly deemed meritless — over coverage he doesn’t like, a tactic members of his administration have learned to mimic. And this latest pressure campaign against Apple comes after years of Republicans peddling demonstrably false conspiracy theories about anti-conservative bias at social media companies. And those claims, incredulously, are still being pushed — as this administration wages an all-out war on the free press and, by extension, arguably free thought itself. Projection, thy name is the Republican Party.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
