First I need to say that my posting this is in no way an insinuation that anyone here is posting things or sources that might biased. I think it's fair to say that almost all media is biased to some degree, and some are moreso than others. I just wanted to post this for everyone to get an idea of how biased some sources are.
The chart linked below represents where many major and minor news outlets appear to be on a graph of overall quality vs partisan bias.
https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/
Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the full chart, and the links across the top will take you to the methodology of scoring/ranking the various sources and other information about the company and the chart. Members (I am not one) can download interactive versions of the chart for personal use.
Thanks for the share! This chart is very helpful as I've been vaguely aware of bias one way or the other from some sources, but this helps put all the news outlets listed into perspective.
I remember in college, one of my class projects involved looking at newspapers and trying to figure out their bias. It might have been a sociology or politics class. The point was that all news is biased to some extent and that bias must be taken into account when using them as a resource.
@tgraf66 Thank you for starting a whole thread on media bias. The chart is an excellent place to start, and I want to add an additional warning about media bias.
The mainstream newspapers that I have relied on -- Washington Post, Boston Globe, NY Times, NPR, the Atlantic, -- have a corporate bias which is a problem that I keep in mind when I'm reading them.
I rely on them because they are well funded, large, and comprehensive in their coverage. The downside of these media outlets is that they are the perspective of large powerful corporations who think that progressive left politics is negatively radical which is often not the case. They don't, for example, post stories favoring AOC, Bernie Sanders, or Ayanna Presley because these politicians do not favor the positions of large corporations but are more grass roots in their perspective. Medicare for All is not radical left, for example. It is the law in most of our allies, but the U.S. medical establishment and insurance industry is against it. Examples of Corporate bias of mainstream media:
- In 2002, the NY Times made the strong case for going to war with Iraq. In fact The NY Times was responsible for tipping the balance in Congress towards going into that war.
- The Boston Globe will not write a negative story about the Massachusetts Republican governor Charlie Baker even though Baker has been pro oil and gas, dragged his feet on climate change, and has endorsed Trumper Senate candidates and protects the wealthy health care industry's profits. The Boston Globe ignores Baker's failures and promotes his successes. They have helped make him the most popular governor in many years.
- The Washington Post consistently reports badly about Bernie Sanders and keeps AOC below the radar. They helped keep Bernie off the ticket in 2016 and again in 2020.
FAIR.org - Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting is a media watchdog group around since 1986, and is well worth reading. Their newsletter Extra! documents the bias.
I have found Democracy Now! and Propublica to be reliable sources, though too small to cover all that I want to read about.
The Atlantic and The New Yorker are good for in-depth news, provided you vet the authors.
Many other outlets are good as long as you can read them with discernment. You cannot trust everything you read, especially because much of the bias comes from what they don't say, who they don't quote.
WaPo Warns Progressive Dems: They Could Win
A standard bias in news coverage in elite outlets (Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, etc.) is centrism—using an allegedly objective voice to warn against or critique “extremism” of left and right. Centrist bias sometimes takes the form of inaccurate critiques of broadly popular progressive policies that are quite defensible —such as Medicare for All or raising the minimum wage. Or it manifests itself in inaccurate claims about the impact of right-wing or progressive “extremism” on US … [Read More...]
The most recent version of the chart (version 6.1) published December 2020:
Amazingly and alarmingly, FOX (Faux) News seems to be going in the wrong direction.
@dannyboy I'm happy to know you're getting good use from it. :-) They update it at least once a year, and the link hasn't changed, so you may want to bookmark it for future reference.