From the WSJ:
Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, said the company missed the error as it focused on other aspects of the product. The company didn’t explain how the problem occurred or say exactly when it might be rectified.
“We’re in the process of fixing that now, but our numbers are lower than reality,” he said. “We don’t know what the right number is,” but he added that it was better to undercount than overcount traffic.
Graham Spencer from MacStories writes:
A curious admission from Apple, particularly given that the issue has not been fixed yet. No details are given about the scale of the miscalculation, so it’s unclear as to whether this will result in a minor adjustment or significant adjustment in reader statistics.
… [T]his is an embarrassing hiccough that Apple News did not need.
Eddy Cue has had a number of missteps in the last year: the Apple Music launch at WWDC was poorly executed, the MAS exodus under his leadership, and now a fairly minor analytics bug making front-page headlines.