These were the top publishers on Facebook in June 2019

Which publications drove the most engagement on Facebook in June 2019? We looked at the data to find out.

We’re officially more than halfway through the year, and that means it’s time for our publisher rankings for June. 

As ever, we are using our API to gather these rankings, the methodology of which you can read about on our developer hub. This analysis includes English-language content from publishers, ranked by Facebook likes, shares, and comments to their web content. Additionally, these rankings do not include media natively uploaded to a Facebook Page, such as a Facebook video.

Some of the key takeaways were:

• CNN remained top, with a very similar number of engagements to last month. 
• The Guardian remained well inside the top ten, cementing its place as one of the most consistently engaged publications
• The Daily Mail rose back into the top three, displacing the New York Times

Let’s move on to the data.

The top publishers on Facebook in June 2019

CNN remained on top of its perch at the top of the rankings this month, generating a remarkably consistent 46 million engagements on its web content, almost exactly the same as the previous month. It did this despite publishing the fewest articles of any of the top five publishers, giving it the highest average engagement of any of the publishers that achieved more than 30 million engagements. 


These engagements were driven by a variety of stories, but if there was a theme, it was immigration. The most engaged story brought attention to the death of a man and his child trying to cross the Rio Grande, and three of the ten most engaged storied dealt with this subject in some way. 

Fox news once again took second place, with a slight increase in its number of engagements vs. the previous month. The Daily Mail bounced back into third place, while the New York Times fell out of the top three, though maintained its number of engagements higher than 30 million for the month for only the second time this year.

Once again The Guardian had a strong showing, having now firmly established itself as consistently being one of the most highly engaged publications in the English speaking world. 

For Fox, the stories that drove engagement were political and cultural, with the top story about Darius Rucker raising over two million dollars for a children’s hospital with a charity golf tournament. Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus’ decision to donate near his entire fortune and support Donald Trump also made headlines for Fox, as did various pieces about Democratic frontrunners Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. 

The Daily Mail had a number of stories commemorating the D-Day landings that performed well for it last month, with a story about reunited romantics the fourth most engaged story for the publisher. Its top story came in the form of a woman who invented seat belts that alert emergency services to medical conditions if the subject is unable to communicate after a car crash, which generated upward of 1.5 million engagements last month. 

But what about the top stories more generally in June 2019? 

The top web articles on Facebook in June

The most engaged url on Facebook was actually a short investigative documentary about conditions at Fair Oaks Farms that was posted on Vimeo which, at well over five million engagements to date, is by far the most engaged piece of web content on Facebook so far this year, even surpassing the TMZ story about Luke Perry’s death from March.


There were a number of stories with more than two million engagements this month, with four of the top fifteen achieving that benchmark.

One particularly successful publisher in terms of the biggest stories was CBS News, who had two stories that both achieved more than two million engagements. The first was a piece on Jon Stewart angrily testifying in front of Congress to demand they fund a bill for 9/11 first responders to receive benefits, while the second was an article that commemorated the 19th Amendment being passed, which guaranteed women the right to vote in the USA one hundred years ago. 

These two stories have the interesting distinction of contributing nearly 20 percent of CBS News’ engagement for the month between them, a number we normally don’t see that high for the biggest news publishers in the world. 

The top 25 publishers on Facebook in June 2019 

In the chart below you can find the top 25 publishers on Facebook ranked by their engagements to their web content. Also shown is the total number of articles that each website published on their platform.


One significant mover within the top 25 for June 2019 was The Huffington Post, which climbed ten places to claim eleventh spot, nearly doubling the engagements it received in May. Beyond that, there was not a great deal of movement, with many of the publishers outside of the top ten remaining roughly steady compared to the previous month. 

Former perennial mainstays Delish and UNILAD remain sidelined out of the top group, at least for the time being. 

Overall engagement across the top publishers did increase slightly this month, with the bottom publisher in the top 25 receiving 11.2 million engagements this month, as compared to 10.6 million in May. 

Want to build your own list of the top publishers on Facebook? Take a tour of NewsWhip Analytics.