So why is it time for another update to the Media Bias Chart? I’m a strong believer in changing one’s mind based on new information. That’s how we learn anyway, and I wish people would do it more often. I think it would lead to nicer online discussions and less polarization in our politics. Perhaps people don’t “change their minds based on new information” as much as they should because it is often framed more negatively as “admitting you are wrong.” I don’t particularly mind admitting I’m wrong.
In any event, I’m making some minor updates to the Media Bias Chart, corrections, and improvements based on feedback I’ve gotten. I’ve been fortunate to hear from many of you thoughtful observers out there, and I’m so grateful that so many of you care about the subject of ranking quality and bias.
The Media Bias Chart Updates
Here are the changes for version 3.1. I’m calling it 3.1 because they are mostly minor changes. I got quite a bit of feedback on these topics in particular.
- The middle column now says “Neutral: Minimal Partisan Bias OR Balance of Biases.” I moved away from the term “Mainstream” because that term is so loaded as to be useless to some audiences. Also, there are some sources that are not really minimally biased or truly neutral; some have extreme stuff from both political sides.
- The horizontal categories have been updated slightly in our Media Bias Chart. The “skew conservative” and “skew liberal” categories no longer have the parenthetical comment “(but still reputable),” mostly because the term “reputable” has more to do with quality on the vertical axis, and I’m doing my best not to conflate the two. The “hyper-partisan conservative” and “hyper-partisan liberal” categories no longer have the parenthetical comments “(expressly promotes views),” mostly because “promoting views” is not the only characteristic that makes something hyper-partisan. Finally, the outermost liberal and conservative “utter garbage/conspiracy theories” categories are now re-labeled “most extreme liberal/conservative.” This is, again, because the terms “utter garbage” and “conspiracy theories,” though often accurate for sources in those columns, has more to do with quality than partisanship.
What has moved?
I am writing a separate post that more specifically defines the horizontal axis and the criteria for ranking sources within them. It’s a pretty complex topic, and I’ll discuss many additional points frequently raised by those of you who have commented. I will likely have more revisions accompanying that post.
- I have moved Natural News from the extreme left to slightly right. I know this may still cause some consternation among commentators that note correctly that they have a lot of extreme right wing political content. However, after categorizing dozens of articles over several sample days and counting how many fell in each category, the breakdown looked like this: About a third fell in the range of “skew liberal” to “extreme liberal” (in terms of promoting anti-corporate and popular liberal pseudo-science positions), another third were relatively politically neutral “health news,” and about a third fell into the extreme conservative bucket. There wasn’t much that fell into the “skew conservative” or “hyper-partisan conservative” categories. So even though the balance was 1/3, 1/3, 1/3, left, center, right, the 1/3 on the right was almost all “most extreme conservative,” so that pushed the overall source rank to the right. For those who are still unhappy and think it should be moved further right, take consolation in the fact that it is still at the bottom vertically, and to an extent, it doesn’t matter how partisan the junk news is as long as you still know it’s junk.
- I removed US Uncut, because as some of you correctly pointed out, that site is now defunct.
- I removed Al-Jazeera from the top middle, but not because I don’t think it’s a mostly reputable news source. I removed it for two reasons.
Al-Jazeera Explained
- First, many people are unclear on what I am referring to as Al-Jazeera. It is a very large international media organization based out of Qatar, (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera), but it is not a very popular source for news to Americans. Americans who are familiar with it could assume that I am referring to Al-Jazeera English (a sister channel), or Al-Jazeera America (a short-lived US organization (2013-2016) which arguably leaned left), or AJ+ (a channel that provides explanatory videos on Facebook and also arguably leans left). I do think these are worth including in the Media Bias Chart, but I will differentiate them before including them in future versions. What I meant originally was the main Al-Jazeera site that is in English, which covers mostly international news, and which I consider a generally high quality and reputable source.
- Second , it is somewhat controversial because it is funded by the government of Qatar, and it has been accused of bias as it pertains to Middle East politics. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it is disreputable, or that its ownership results in stories that are biased to the left or right on the US political spectrum. However, I have only two other non-US sources on the Media Bias Chart—the BBC and DailyMail—which both have significant enough coverage of US politics that you can discern bias on the US spectrum. I don’t have any other internationally sources on the Media Bias Chart, and none that are primarily funded by a non-democratic government (the BBC is funded by the British public, NPR is publicly and privately funded in the US). Until I can specify which articles I have rated to form the basis for Al-Jazeerza’s placement, I’m going to leave it off.
Thanks for the comments so far, and please keep them coming. I appreciate your suggestions for how to make this work better and your requests for what you want to see in the future.
This is such an excellent tool, and thanks for your continuing to update and refine the important process.
Thank you!
How do I get a copy of this updated version?
Please contact mediabiaschart@gmail.com
Hi! Love this list – great idea. Could you consider adding the Chicago Tribune, LA Times, The Atlantic, and McClatchy News? Thanks!
Yes, will do!
Ah, a friend just pointed out that The Atlantic is on there, next to Vox and Slate.
Oh, the Atlantic! I should have thought about that one! Nice.
Solid changes. I’ve enjoyed following your logical thought processes as you’ve revised your axes and the criteria for each. Removing the parenthetical comments makes sense, as does changing “mainstream” to “neutral”. I don’t think most folks care too much about Natural News –I’d never heard of it myself, and after going to the site backed away sloooowly– but moving a site from “liberal” to “conservative” raises a question about definitions. Do you have definitions you can share? I tend to think of liberal as more socialist and statist, and conservative as more capitalistic and individualist. But it might be helpful… Read more »
Thanks for the comment, Ken. I have a forthcoming post about the definitions of “liberal” and “conservative.”
ON your other questions, take a look at my recently-posted FAQ https://adfontesmedia.com/faq/
How about just using the terms “left “and “right”?
Awesome job with the chart. A picture is worth a thousand words….
Thanks! That helps!
What about RT? Russian TV? It’s not on the chart. Pls advice 🙂
I’m going to have a whole post about RT. The main reason I don’t have it on there is because it is not a US-based news source. I only have BBC and Daily Mail on there (UK publications) because they have such a large international audience. More to come, but generally, I would not advise relying on RT as an reliable source.
I only recently found your site and am very impressed, but (at the risk of getting nit-picky) aren’t The Guardian and The Economist also both UK-based publications?
That aside, I think this is a much-needed, rational discussion, and I will be back.
Yes, you are correct 🙂
The Economist is a UK-based news organization, but I’m almost 100% certain that it has more readers in the US than any other nation and quite possibly than in all of Europe. I have no source to cite, but I’m not a professional journalist, so I think it’s OK for me to rely on some vaguelyrecalled information. Of course, you should trust my views on this far less than anything published by one of the major press agencies.
I wish you’d leave AlJezeera on there for the same reasons you’re keeping BBC–just keep the above footnotes. You’re doing awesome work here–thank you so much!
Hi! Would you mind shifting the key up a little so the descriptions of the boxes line up a bit better with the boxes themselves? Thanks!
Yes, I’ll make the next version prettier 🙂
Great changes. It’s good to see that you’re refining your lexicon with greater precision and a more business-like tone. I think it lends additional credibility to your work.
Wtf no YOUNG TURKS?? How they’re the largest online show ever.. 10 billion views total. Ridiculous…
I’ll have them on the next chart!
Don’t bother-they are terrible.
There aren’t even 10 billion people on the planet…
Views is not the same as viewers…total is accumulated views of all their videos…one person might watch 3 videos every day. But lets say 1 person watches 3 videos/day (the live newscast plus a couple side stories/opinion pieces) x 1million followers. (Nowhere near their following of all their channels). Over the course of just one year, that alone would be a little over 1 billion views.
Agree! There are huge…uber liberal
How do you define “liberal” and “conservative”?
Also, your comment about AJ is spot on. I read AJ every day. They have excellent articles and good coverage of things that often get overlooked by US news sources. (Same with RT. Some RT articles are absurdly biased, but I pretend I can tell when that is the case.)
I’ll have a whole post on how I define “liberal” and “conservative” shortly.
What about the Brookings Institute?
You might consider using a barbell shape for sites like Natural News.
I was surprised to see The Hill on the “skews conservative” column – I had always considered it to be in a mirror position on the skews liberal column. But thanks for this great resource.
The position of The Hill has always been my biggest gripe with this chart (except for the fact that the Washington Post should be down by Buzzfeed).
Yes I agree.
With version 3.1, it looks as if The Chart is going to continue to receive updates over time. (This is great!) Here are a couple thoughts for helping new readers and repeat visitors understand what they’re seeing. 1) “All Generalizations Are False” (https://adfontesmedia.com/) should bring people to the current version of the chart (it does) with a headline that reflects the current version (I was confused that it says “3.0” today.) 2) That page should have an introductory paragraph about what The Chart represents, and details of how to interpret it. This is a good presentation for new readers of… Read more »
Thanks for the suggestions. I agree and will incorporate them.
“I don’t particularly mind admitting I’m wrong.” How refreshing.
Thanks for the earlier version and the updates. Intelligence and civil dialogue still have a chance.
They do have a chance! I’m optimistic!
The fact that Fox is where it is but MSNBC is where it is shows your own bias.
They are not mirror images of each other, and it would be weird if they ended up on exactly the same plane based on my analysis of individual statements for Veracity, Expression, and Fairness. FOX shows tend to have a lot more opinion statements, misleading statements, and unfair statements than other sources, including MSNBC.
I would agree that your liberal bias is showing with your analysis of Fox vs. MSNBC. I have seen numerous statements on MSNBC that chased me away from them as a reliable news source. there are other examples in your list but that’s the main one that sticks out.
I will have sub-charts that show the distinctions across the various shows on both channels, but generally, Fox has quantitatively much more opinion in its programming.
Your bias shows horribly with FOX. FOX has an obvious bias, but it is still an accurate report. To say it is not even news is pretty absurd. You at least put CNN where it belongs, but NPR is way out of place and Huffington Post should be lower.
You seriously havent done much reasearch the huffington post is almost 100% propaganda its literally a tabloid and you have it so high up above fox news you are very biased haveing an equal number of spots for conservative and liberal news outlets shows your bias any moron who sees articles and news in general can tell that conservatives are outnumbered greatly.
If you want I can send you 2 dozen articles of this tabloid that anyone could wipe there ass with where they lie and overexagerate
You cannot say The Daily Wire represents all of Fox News. You and other people need to be able to distinguish news from talk shows.
The Daily Wire is a separate publication, not a Fox show.
This is awesome and I’m glad to see the update to the update. Thank you!
Including Salon.com might be a thing. It seems to want to belong in the vicinity of Alternet and Daily KOS. I see links to articles posted there often enough to justify a placement. I find that about half the time, they’re reproducing articles posted elsewhere (with incomplete linking back to the source). Frustrating at best.
Excellent work. Thanks for continuing to improve and adjust as needed.
Excellent posts and excellent feedback, Vanessa. I felt compelled to find the source of this chart after seeing it on social media a few times. Good work. I wanted to comment on Natural News. I first saw it on the left, and felt that was misplaced, because the majority of it comes from the conspiracy monger who runs it, Mike Adams. Mike Adams is as right-wing, and as nutty, as Alex Jones from Infowars. He was histrionic about Obama being president, and consistently posts very conservative social views on race and LGBQT issues. He’s even an HIV causes AIDS denialist.… Read more »
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. Apologies for the delay in replying. I largely agree with your points. I think they would be best addressed in a future version of the chart (a dynamic, interactive one) that shows individual stories within a source ranked.
Really interesting project on an important topic. I particularly love how you’ve detailed your methodology. I’d hesitate to give unsolicited advice when you’ve done so much work already, but since you’ve asked, I do have a couple of reactions that I hope are helpful. Please forgive the length! Trying to “show my working” rather than just give my opinion. 1. I’m surprised to see Jacobin above and only barely to the left of the Atlantic and Vox. Jacobin articles are in-depth, but their style is consistently “narrative” and activist. Jacobin takes a clear position defined by its ideological pole and… Read more »
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback! Apologies for the delay in responding. I generally agree with your point about Jacobin in relation to Vox and the Atlantic. The placement doesn’t reflect the degree of partisanship. I’ll try to make that clearer on the next version.
I am working on something similar to your suggestion in point #2, and the ovals will disappear in the next version.
Thanks for the response. I appreciate your seemingly tireless engagement with feedback!
Hi Vanessa, is it possible to publish raw data that you used to come up with the chart? E.g. the sentence by sentence scoring you talked about?
Sorry for the delay in responding–I don’t have that in a publishable format right now but I will have a paper on it in the future and plan to make several types of data available.
Are you planning to include details pertaining to ownership of the different sources? I believe this is also an important aspect of bias and vested interests.
Thank you for creating, maintaining and continuing to improve this superb resource. I also appreciate how you take on-board constructive feedback and suggestions from others. You rock! : )
Yes, I will be including that information in future. Thank you!
I’m wondering where the Chicago Tribune would be on the chart?
Will add.
This is an excellent tool, thank you! However, I would urge you to reconsider your dropping of Al Jazeera English and to please return that organization to the chart. The network is esteemed in Europe and has a significant online following in the U.S., winning countless awards for excellence in journalism. I watch it all the time on Roku, along with CNN and the BBC. Please do not let loud and politically motivated detractors of Al Jazeera (it was bullied by Cheney during the Bush administration) impact the neutrality and objectivity you have obviously put into this helpful project.
Thanks. I’ll include it when I have more data published.
Great site – thanks! What about ProPublica?
Let me echo Doug’s plea. I don’t know much about Al Jazeera, but every time I read a story from (one of their) sites it seemed like the most useful article I found all day. So it’s important to list it.
Do I win a prize because all the sources I trust are in the upper middle section? I guess it means that your analysis lines up well with who I have learned (in a less rogorous way) is worthy of my trust. You put the Economist a tad lower than I would have guessed (I’d put it right on the yellow-green border) and the Hill and Politico a higher than I might have thought, but maybe I need to give those two a bit more of a chance to proove themselves. Fundamentally, your chart does an excellent job of tellign… Read more »
So helpful! Can you include Spanish – language media?
Perhaps down the road, but that is a big project!
Washington Post and The Guardian on the middle? They are screaming left!
They’re not in the middle. They certainly lean left. Compared to the sources to the left of them, wouldn’t you agree they are not as extreme?
I think both you and Max need to pay a little more attention to the differences between American and European political norms. The Guardian is indeed much more ‘left’ than ‘liberal’ by American standards. By European standards, it’s not that left-wing, and is somewhere between ‘left’ and ‘liberal’ (i.e. centre-left). The Washington Post and NYT are indeed ‘liberal’ on both sides of the Atlantic, but by European standards, they are really centre-right, because pretty much all American politics is skewed to the right looked at this way. Wherever you look from and wherever your political centre is, however, The Guardian… Read more »
Thanks for the great work. Could you create a version of the chart depicting the readership/viewership sizes of the sources (perhaps instead of their logos, use a size bubble). Then the chart could convey how many people are consuming news vs opinion vs nonsense. By omitting the logos, there would be less distraction — people judging your placements — that data would be available elsewhere and not detract from the new information revealed with the sizes of the source types. Of course, people consume from multiple source categories, but the information would still be useful, I think.
Thanks for the suggestion. That’s coming.
Curious why Telemundo and Univision are excluded? They are a major news source for many Americans.
No particular reason other than simply room on the chart. I’ll plan on including them in the future.
Any chance of a chart that would include, RT, NNK, CCCTV, BBC, France 24, etc. Possibly your next project?
In the future, yes, but probably not in my immediate upcoming versions. There are a number of additional challenges in ranking foreign news sources in a primarily US-based news chart. The ones that are on there now are there on there based on their coverage of US news.
RT is controlled by the Russian government. They should absolutely NOT be on there!
I actually really hate this graphic tbh…it seems that we’re supposed to trust the sources in the top middle, but looking at them, I have no more faith in their truth-value than others, and for some of those sources up there, very much less than others (e.g. NBC News, Reuters, Bloomberg, Time, and the “local newspapers” which are usually controlled by larger media conglomerates and rich people with political ties). I just try to use google or duckduckgo and read like 5 different takes on the same thing if I hope to glean anything. No one source will get us… Read more »
Sorry for being so negative!! I actually appreciate that you tried to put something together with good intention that deals with the crazy media bias that we have. Perhaps the chart would be more accurate if the “overall quality” meter was scrapped, since it’s such a case-by-case thing or if there were a vacuum at the top to indicate the lack of quality, contextual journalism in our media landscape. The sources currently at the top can be dangerous mouthpieces for government propaganda, as we saw with their coverage of “weapons of mass destruction”, “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, etc, and can sometimes… Read more »
Fascinating chart. I’d love to see some newer organizations like ThinkProgress and Media Matters on here. I think Jacobin should definitely be along the left edge (although the vertical placement in “complex analysis” should stay the same), seeing as they’re an openly socialist group and they use “liberal” as a negative term fairly often. They’re certainly more extreme than, say, Louise Mensch.
Wow, one of the shining lights in a very dark US National tunnel. Thank you. Keep it up!
Thanks!
I use Google News for my “quick 5 minute new fix” more often than any other news source. And I bet 10’s of millions of others do the same. Is it not included in your chart because it mainly consists of headlines and links to other news sources?
Google News is an aggregator, like MSN.com or Yahoo, or even Facebook, Twitter, or Apple’s news app. I could rank aggregators, but I think its more useful to rank the sources themselves.
Drudge is an aggregator.
Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN all have a mixture of news and opinion programming. While it would be fair to argue that since these companies do not consistently label these programs as such you should evaluate them all together, but I would be interested in seeing where you would plot them if Fox News and Fox News Opinion and their counterparts were plotted as separate entities.
I would certainly place them in different spots. Future versions will have certain shows and stories broken out and ranked.
Curious to know where In These Times might fit in – I’m guessing in the same area as Huffpost.
Will add to the list!
It would be interesting to add NRATV to this list of news sources.
I wouldn’t consider it a news source, but I bet you could guess where it goes.
At first, I was a bit skeptical as to your methodology and thought you might be subject to the prevailing cult of false equivalency. However, after analyzing your chart, I believe that you have done an excellent and accurate job, which is refreshing for a subject so critical to our democracy. My only reservation might be that we all, IMHO, have moved the goalposts these days on what is considered liberal and what is considered conservative. For example, many of the issues that we currently interpret as “Hyper-Partisan Liberal” or “Extreme Liberal” might well have been “middle of the road”… Read more »
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I agree, and further submit that the goalposts always move when it comes to partisanship. As an example in the other direction, certain political positions that would have seemed extremely liberal a couple of generations ago, such as legal same-sex marriage, are fairly middle-of-the-road today. I think an accurate assessment of bias has to necessarily re-assess where those goalposts are every six months or so. I’ll detail that more in my next post.
…or, for example, how the recent Democratic administration had been considered left when they had been echoed nearly exactly by right-leaning or moderate/center parties in Europe.
Hi Grant- The points you cited in regards to the spectrum shifting are cherry picked and have more story behind them than simply laying them down as fact. If you took into consideration the extreme Marxist movement on the far left you could make the case that the “goalposts” have moved to the left. Consider that many publicly paid University professors are currently teaching students that differing opinions should be considered hate speech and that those with differing opinions should be shut down under that guise, leading to this increasing movement of limiting free speech and closing minds which is… Read more »
This is a good visual and a good tool. I’d recommend looking at TalkingPoints Memo, an established news source with original reporting
Hi Vanessa, this is a brilliant tool, much needed in our times, and I was relieved to come across it. Please could you include an analysis of Business Insider when you are able? Many thanks
I will. Thanks!
This is fantastic. Thank you for doing this. I often refer back to this when I feel that I need to check myself on the news media I’m looking at, and I encourage others to do the same. It’s especially great that you explain why you put each source where they are on the chart so that we can check on your conclusions and provide feedback. It also helps us when we are considering other media, or explaining to others why we do/don’t trust a source. I look forward to when you put Al-Jazerra back on the chart. I am… Read more »
Thanks!
Hi! Just came across your site this morning while doing some Internet surfing. The chart is great, and I wish we could implement this type of information into our daily lives as reminders that there is bias in everything. Your earlier writings look fascinating, so I plan to spend some time on your site. Keep up the good work!
Vanessa
Would VICE News not quality as a news source? I have read and seen many of their investigational pieces which I consider news worthy.
I’ll have them on in future versions.
Can you rate Snopes.com? I know they are not an original news source. However, they are frequently called upon to evaluate news items and I have seen extreme-left and extreme-right sources claim they are paid by the other side in order to spread lies. Having an independent evaluation of their writings would be a good thing, in my opinion.
I’m probably not going to include fact-checkers themselves because they add a few different dimensions, but I like Snopes and people should rely on them as well as sites like Politifact. Of course the extreme-right and extreme-left sites say ridiculous stuff about them. They are wrong.
Okay. I think you are saying you will not be including Snopes. Can you think of another forum/service/group that is rating writings and issuing assessments as to the political leanings of the authors? I sure would like to get an independent opinion. Thanks for the reference to Politifact; I have never read their work but will go check them out based on your faith in them.
Please add Counterpunch.org
In general I’m very impressed with your sincere effort at genuine unbiased evaluation and don’t disagree with any of your decisions enough to make an issue about it. I do have a couple suggestions to make this more is. First, have a long press (or let click on a computer) of any logo pop up a dialog that explains your reasons for placing that source where you did including sampling methods, criteria and additional details. Second, make an adjustment based on the viewership and hours of coverage from the entertainment and news sides of Fox News. Two hours of Hannity… Read more »
Thanks for the suggestions. I am certainly working on incorporating those things you mention–in particular, separating out different kinds of shows and showing their impact as a function of audience size. Stay tuned!
Excellent! This was really helpful to me when discussing media bias with FB friends.
Aljazeera ???
I find this chart a very useful complement to the Google news page. Keep up this good work!
The chart is getting a bit hard to read. It will get more difficult as you add more news sources. Any chance we could make a grid? 0 to 10 along a vertical axis, and A to K along the horizontal. We’d then need an alphabetical list of the sources and a reference to where they can be found on the chart. In the chart above, Palmer Report would be a 1A. The problem now is that the computer search will not find “Time” on the chart. As version 4 and above come along it will get harder and harder… Read more »
I am of the left, which means that is where I watchdog. Raw Story, Now This, Scott Dworkin… these are all outlets which could use a spot in the bottom-ish left.
Propaganda and generalizations must be pointed out to those who are at least interested in paying attention.
You’re doing amazing work. Thank you and keep it up!
Thanks!
This is a CNN (sorry) related comment. I read both the 3.1 post and your CNN post. (p.s. i was taught what/how to look for propaganda, so i use that tool to view news and here are my thoughts) I think it would benefit you in breaking up CNN into two fields, 1 CNN-Politics and the other CNN-News. I would also suggest moving CNN-Politics to align itself with Huffington Post. If you do a meta analysis of the political articles by both, you will notice that they use very similar verbiage talking about the right, or the left. I wish… Read more »
Thanks for the thoughtful comment!
and yes, this is a great resource, would be great to establish a rating system that needs to be disclosed by sources… but then that would get politicized, wouldn’t it…
Hi, the investigative analysis source I turn to for skilled, informed voices that are not beholden to any “official story” is http://www.consortiumnews.com. It’s a non-profit site founded by the late Robert Parry, who was the investigative reporter that broke the Iran-Contra story.
Please rate US New and World Reports and Newsweek
Thank you for the tip!