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Where’s your favorite information source stand on the political scale?
I’ve updated the following subjective chart based on information compiled from various sources and your feedback. Some sources have shifted left or right, others have been added including: ESPN, McClatchy, the Federalist, Conservative Review, Washington Monthly, Twitchy, Gateway Pundit and Conservative Treehouse.
Please note that outlets on left and right sometimes publish material that’s on the opposite side of the political spectrum, or that has no political leaning at all. The placement is based on perceived overall tone and audience. Position on the chart doesn’t necessarily imply credibility or lack thereof. Sources on far right and far left have, in many instances, produced excellent, factually correct information at times.
I have loosely placed more traditional information sources in the top half of the chart working down toward aggregators, fact-checkers, opinion sites and less news-related sources. (This posed some position challenges since most of traditional information sources are left-leaning.) I did not attempt to place individual programs or broadcasts.
Compiling such a chart is obviously difficult for many reasons, some of them having to do with space. The spacing should be considered relative and not an indicator of absolute position. A number of the information sources technically belong on top of one another.
You have contributed terrific ideas, such as sizing boxes based on audience, and dividing into quadrants. This is a work in progress. Thanks for your input!
Think a source should be moved? Want one added? Leave a comment!
For a larger view, click on the image and enlarge.
Alternate charts and opinions:
https://www.infowars.com/alternate-reality-viral-propaganda-chart-demonizes-independent-media/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com
Preorder “The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think and How You Vote.”
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The Hill has gone far left over the last six months. Very sad.
My problem is that I don’t know what the heck “right” and “left” mean in this context. From my perspective, “left” is fake news, and “right” is “real” news. When I listen or watch the Clinton News Network (CNN), or MSNBC, I have no idea where reality is. On the other hand, when I watch OAN or Fox, I have a pretty good idea what is true or is not. So, what does this chart mean? The question really is, does the left really live in an altered state of reality, or do they just use news outlets to push their view of what they would like reality to be?
It’s easy Joe, the left only gives the “good” facts about liberals but never the “bad” facts and only the “bad” facts about conservatives but never the “good” facts. They seldom lie. They just never tell the truth–the whole, objective truth, that is. It’s a great propaganda tool and works great. It’s kept the Democrats alive for decades. It got Obama elected twice when truly objective, whole truth reporting would have doomed him from the start. It’s really censorship.
You need theconservativetreehouse.com on the list. It is amazingly accurate about all things.
It’s there, look in the middle all the way to the right.
It’s there, lower right. No tree.
It’s all about the money as that’s how they keep score…..
Your chart makes sense, the thing about the “right” as with most Republicans is that they don’t Fall lock step like Liberal Democrats..So it’s probably more off balance than pictured..
I’ve seen many of these charts and this one comes the closest to my own opinions. I would probably say CNN belongs a little less left. Not sure they’re more left than NBC or NPR.
Business Insider needs to go MUCH further left. They started out reasonably balanced but seem to have nearly abandoned all efforts in the past 6-9 months. They’ve changed.
LOL! It’s the Trump Effect! Being a conservative isn’t same as being on Trump Train. Also, some of these rags push the Globalist agenda. The Globalists tend to lean left, but they have many conservatives (McCain/Graham,Rubio,BushFamily, et al) in their camp.
I tend to think Globalist/Populist(wish there was a better word with less baggage) is becoming the new divide. Immigration is a Globalist issue more so than left/right, as is IslamoRealism. These 2 issues only appear liberal because they own the old media that pushes it. I also believe the transgender thing, especially as it rleates to children is a bridge too far for many Democrats.
McLame and Grahamnesty conservative? Wow, have another sip of Kool-Aid
Rolling Stone is further left than shown on the chart.
You need to add ESPN in the left column.
All the biased fact checkers need to be pushed a bit more to the left.
Daily Caller can be nudged to the right
The Hill can be nudged to the left
Also consider adding two dashed vertical lines on either side of the spectrum and labeling them “outright propaganda” to show when they have gone too far – CNN can be in this new category on the left side
Also add MSNBHeeHaw to the “outright propaganda” column.
BuzzFeed, Google and Mashable might be a smidgen more left. But basically it looks right to me. Thanks.
Move Huffington Post further left, if that’s even possible ???? Also, do you count Rebel Media?
WSJ belongs in the center IMHO. Maybe even slightly left of center.
Agree. The WSJ has shifted left and anti-Trump especially in the last year to the point where
I called to cancel my subscription. The only reason I kept it was because they offered to lower the price for several months to keep me from bailing. If things don’t get back to the center or right of center I’ll find another source and use my stack of old paper to clean my pet’s litter box with.
This is great. I’d say Reuters, the Hill, and CNBC could all slide to the left a bit.
Would be very interesting to also identify the ones Google & Facebook are identifying as “Fake News”. Pretty sure they’d all be on one side of the chart.
Fairly accurate but I would slide FOX News farther left (in line with the left border of the WSJ). It is now, thanks to regulars Shep Smith, Jon Scott, Bill Hemmer, Bret Baier, Dana Perino and “contributors” Charles Lane, Marcie Harf, Becker and Williams it is much, much closer to the middle.
Thanks
The Hill used to be a fairly credible site, but has taken a hard left turn. I would move them more to the left. Slate also has to be considered more Left than CNN, although CNN is making a play to be where you currently have them. I would also move the Economist. I wouldn’t consider them a conservative publication.
Agree about The Economist, sit them right next to Bloomberg, dopplegangers
I agree. I’ve been reading The Economist forever, and I now find myself occasionally asking “Is this really the Economist?” It started during the GW Bush years, accelerated during the Obama administration, and come to full bloom with the election of Trump. Their position on Brexit is that it’s idiotic, Neanderthals defeated the brilliant and accomplished Hillary Clinton, climate science is settled, we all need to be on bicycles, the California high speed rail is genius, and globalism will solve all. There are weeks that I don’t recognize the publication at all.
Frank F has it correctly: They belong near Bloomberg. But not quite as far to the left as the Guardian.
Another vote for moving The Economist to the left half of the chart – they’ve been lefty for years now. Some evidence:
Endorsed Hillary Clinton
Endorsed Obama over Romney
Endorsed Obama over McCain
Cover of Donald Trump speaking through a megaphone shaped as a KKK hat
Anti – Brexit
Pro Obamacare
Pro open borders (opponents are “xenophobic”)
Against Originalism and Originalist courts
Pro gun control
Wow, you have CNN and Time as far left as you have Breitbart, Infowars, and the Blaze on the right? You don’t think that’s a bit much? Certainly, you could put some left leaning sources – like Huffpo or Salon – as far to the left as those… but then you have even Mother Jones to the right of CNN? Did you just take a bunch of news organizations and randomly distribute them on the continuum? This is the worst one of these that I have seen.
The chart isn’t exact in terms of proportion. Where do you think they belong?
What’s the point of having a continuum if you aren’t going to worry about proportion? Are you just looking to get social media posts? Why does this exist if you didn’t attempt to be accurate?
As far as CNN and Time, probably center-left, for both of them – MSNBC is certainly more liberal than CNN. In general, it seems like a lot of things are further to the left than they should be. Daily Kos and Mother Jones are both, certainly, further to the left than the Atlantic or CNN.
Matt, wikileaks exposed the sheer level of collusion between CNN and the Hillary campaign. To state that CNN is center-left in light of this evidence is absurd. If you are not aware of the extent of collusion that occurred (and is probably still occurring) between the DNC and CNN, I would suggest you need to expand your repertoire of news providers.
CNN earned their position on the far left side of this chart.
So, they are far left because they don’t like Trump? Why isn’t The Blaze over there, too, then? The only collusion I saw was Donna Brazille leaking things – that exposes far more a problem with the practice of paying political hacks as talking heads than the network as a whole. Also, keep citing Wikileaks, the Russian intelligence service loves when their work is appreciated.
CNN should be no further left than Fox News is right. Fox can’t seem to stop singing the President’s praises, and they air blatantly partisan shows that make no attempt at straight journalism. Again, this is a terrible visual representation.
CNN representatives caught with their hand in the cookie jar
[Source: Wikileaks]
CNN – Brianna Keilar
CNN – Dan Merica
CNN – David Chailan
CNN – Erin Burnett
CNN – Gloria Borger
CNN – Jake Tapper
CNN – Jeff Zeleny
CNN – Jeff Zucker
CNN – John Berman
CNN – Kate Bouldan
CNN – Maria Cardona
CNN – Mark Preston
CNN – Sam Feist
Matt, I don’t think you watch/listen to Fox News, so you might have missed the big on-going tiff Trump had with Megyn Kelly. I also catch their radio news updates now and then, and sometimes the way they phrase things or their focus seems to have more of a negative spin for Trump than I think it should.
As for CNN, they are not “far left because they don’t like Trump”, as you put it. It is, as Brian explained very clearly, due in part to the proven COLLUSION between CNN and the Democrat campaign for president. When a news outlet is caught (and multiple times, at that) working with a political candidate, that should erase any sense of objectivity a viewer associates with them. If you still think they’re on equal footing with Fox, show me where Fox colluded with the Trump campaign and I’ll agree with you.
Very good work Sharyl, I find this chart to be very helpful. I do, however, believe that The Economist should be just to the left of the line based solely on the last article of theirs that I read. It was 2008, and they were talking about how Obama’s economic policies would be great. Their analysis sounded like a puff piece, and I feel eight years worth of vindication.
I recently saw a similar chart that divided media into 4 quadrants, liberal to conservative and MSM to new media. Don’t recmember where, but was obviously a liberal product bc some obviously liberal outlets were pit as middle of the road. Your chart, while not entirely accurate, is far better than the one I saw previously
Would you consider adding the Associated Press? As an organization, their articles are picked up by many left leaning papers across the country.
They’re on there, top left second row
Thanks for sharing this chart on Twitter! It’s very good and some of the comments here offer productive revisions or additions. Please explain how you placed the sources either high or low on the chart — was it based on your perception of their accuracy?
Sharyl, I’m confused about why Google is on a chart for media bias. Google is not a media outlet. Why are they on here, and how are they left-wing?
It’s a distributor/common source of news. But I take your point. Not a perfect chart, I just included what made sense to me. Work in progress.
Sharyl: Just discovered your entry after it popped up on Lucianne, and in Conservative Treehouse, the former one of the oldest news aggregator sites (but not on your list).
Also, may I suggest adding American Greatness and the Claremont Review of Books to your list: They are the popular and intellectual homes of “West Coast Straussianism,” which is centered at the Claremont Institute with a major outpost at Hillsdale College. We West Coast Straussians (or, affectionately, “Claremonsters”) detest the “Conservative, Inc.” East Coast Straussians, who infest the DC conservative think tanks and are led by Bill Kristol, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, and John Podhoretz — You unintentionally touched on it in “The Smear.”
Separately, may I suggest another type of split (perhaps into quadrants) to which another poster alluded: The so-called Jacksonian Nationalist/Wilsonian Progressive (Globalist) split.
Let me explain: Back in 2001/2, Walter Russell Mead published the seminal “Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World,” where he laid out four overarching foreign policy themes — Hamiltonian mercantilism, Jeffersonian isolationism, plus Wilsonian progressivism, and Jacksonian nationalism — with the latter two dominating the post-WWII environment, across party lines.
For a better explanation, please see Roger Fontaine’s Dec. 16, 2001 WashTimes review titled “Hamiltonians, Jeffersonians, plus Wilsonians and Jacksonians.”
Circling back around to The Swamp, we West Coast Straussians are almost all Jacksonian Nationalists, while our “Acela corridor” brethren are almost all Wilsonian Progressives.
Some prominent West Coasters include Victor Davis Hanson, David Goldman a/k/a “Spengler,” Angelo Codevilla, Chris Buskirk, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, and of course, President Trump, who, as I documented last year in American Greatness, was a Jacksonian even 30 years ago.
CNN has done more to subvert our electoral process than Russia by far. Fascist Socialist Propagandists at CNN and MSDNC are so far left they shouldn’t be legitimized in a nation that appreciates freedom and liberty.
Nothing new. The profession of news has been slanted one way or the other since its inception. Just follow the money and you’ll understand the slant of today. The graph does seem about right. The major issue, in my opinion, is the amount of opinion shows on entertainews cable channels. Too many take opinion as actual fact.
I also paused over American Thinker. I tend to think of it as a collection of opinion blogs more so than news. The lines between news and opinion have pretty much disappeared. If you pay attention to nightly network news, they are a little more subtle in their adjective usage. Rush Limbaugh is a “conservative” talk show host, but you don’t hear the Anderson,Maddows,Mathews of the world called “liberal” commentators. Not exaclty “opinion”, but sorta.
American Thinker is Right.
So is new site AmericanGreatness.com. Right.
BBC is Left. Economist is Left. (Brits are usually center or left in my experience.)
WSJ should be at least in the Center.
Using President Trump as a litmus test (either way) disregards each site’s body of work. A number of so-called Right sites have not been supporters.
Agreed on most of the outlets except BBC, which I think is center to left
If by “right” you mean closest to the Constitution and America’s founding principles and beliefs; and conversely, “left” meaning opposed to same.
I do not see circa.com on your chart. I use it for one of my online news sources. Do you have any thoughts on where it would be placed in this chart?
Is there a reason Business Insider appears twice?
Fox News vs fox opinion very very different ( hannity or oriely vs bair)
If you can differentiate news / bair down middle , hannity far right.
It would also be interesting to note whether or not the employees of each of these organizations belong to unions or not. Many people are not aware just how unuionized the media and entertainment industries are and this certainly influences their bias.
I Personally think Business Insider should be much further left.
The chart makes it look like news outlets are roughly evenly split, which they aren’t. Take the center line and move 1/4 the way to the right – that would be one way to do it. But specifically… Reuters is in the middle?? (absolutely freaking not) as is UPI??.. Fox is nowhere near that conservative, they should be toward the center. NYP and WSJ are not that conservative… Mediaite and FactCheck.org need to be further to the left… CNN is no longer a news organization <–seriously.
Agreed. The line should be moved a quarter to the right.
That said, the overall distribution is very good (well done!) even though, as many point out, defining left vs right is increasingly tricky since there is also establishment versus nationalist, and reasonably factual vs out-and-out propaganda. Fox News is tricky. Generally, they have many voices which don’t buy knee-jerk liberal views on social issues. In terms of anything to do with war, they follow whatever the Guvmint tells them to follow (as do CNN). The stars at night are opinionated and expressively so (as is Rachel Maddow who has a doctorate from Oxford in politics I believe) but all three tend to be good at providing quite a bit of substance with their polemic which most of their competition on the other side of the chart do not, so I believe there is some truth to the observation that the stuff on the right tends to be more reality based versus agenda-ideology based.
I have a different way of measuring all this, I call it my BS meter. For example, day-time Fox is about 70% BS. Night-time is around 75% with military-govt stuff but more like 25% with most other topics. Whereas CNN is pretty much 75% or more BS all the time in terms of what they select and how they cover it.
I came here from American Thinker. It’s a good online magazine with a lot of very intelligent offerings.
I agree with a previous post, ESPN has become a liberal news channel that uses sports to frame the narrative. I’ve almost completely quit watching unless my alma mater is playing… ESPN should be far left represented.
WSJ should be closer to the center. FOX farther right. CNN farther left. I would probably bring NR closer to Middle as well. InfoWars not even on the chart as they are same league as grocery store tabloids. This is a fun chart that should continue to grow. Add the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to the left side.
I used to think that InfoWars was just a conspiracy theory site that had no validity or facts to any of their assertions. But over the last year we’ve seen many of their stories proven to be true primarily through WikiLeaks and Guccifer2.0. I still find myself taking things that they report with a grain of salt but it many cases I find that the news that they report makes more sense logically than the stories that are reported on the MSM from both sides of the aisle. The main thing that hurts their credibility is that Alex Jones goes off the rails at times and flips out in addition to constantly interrupting his guests. The fact that Mike Cernovich is becoming a regular guest on the program is only helping to solidify their position as a more credible news outlet. If one wants to challenge Cernovich’s credentials and cite the 60 Minutes story then all I can ask is why wont 60 Minutes release their entire unedited interview with him? What do they have to hide?
CSM further right.
AP, Snopes & Buzzfeed further left.
When there is this much space/time to fill, content MUST be *generated*.
I believe I see Business Insider shown twice.
Is The Federalist in there ?
BI a bit further left,but overall seems pretty fair to me
I am a “conspiracy” believer with respect to media. What do I mean by that? I mean that the US government has enormous clandestine influence over most of the world’s media today. The US government felt a patriotic imperative to control and manipulate the spread of information during WWII as part of the war effort. After WII, Frank Wisner took over that effort and kept expanding it, first as part of the “Directorate of Plan” and then within the CIA. The media people who were witting to the extent of US government influence were the media owners – people like Henry and Claire Booth Luce, Eugene Meyer, William Paley, Arthur Sulzberger, etc. and the exec editors they hired. This control allowed outlets of record to carry & promote stories that the CIA/DOD approved of and kill or deemphasize the ones that it did not. Media consolidation into a small handful of conglomerates has increased the level of control over time – e.g. a young Rupert Murdoch was already a media partner of CIA/MI6 in the overthrow of the liberal government of Australia in 1975; his ascendancy to a worldwide media empire is linked to that partnership. Today, defense contractor General Electric owns NBC. The ratings of the news divisions on the media network are relatively incidental to the busines fortunes of the conglomerate. The allegations about “Operation Mockinbird”, Carl Bernstein’s Rolling Stone writeup on the discoveries of the Church Commission, and similar sources are only the tip of the iceberg in the true story of clandestine influence of US government on media. Examples of the extent of control: 1964 censorship of all publications questioning the official story of JFK assassination, complete media blackout of the civil trial and verdict related to the murder of MLK, unquestioning acceptance of the completeness of the story that a mega-pro team of CIA linked burglars just happened to get arrested while leaving clues at Watergate and that FBI #2 Mark Felt just happened to pick intel-linked Woodward for secret communications about Nixon’s coverup because that was the only way the FBI’s #2 could do things, hadly any public mention of the known fact that Reagan gave Saddam chemical weapons to use against Iran, no discussion of the long history of US sponsorship for terrorism in Latin America, pretending that long CIA history of narcotics running is just a theory and not well documented in 100s of places over decades….and recent acceptance of story that “Russian hacked the 2016 election” even though the story barely made sense to begin with, and ALL US govt. endorsed evidence for it has been publicly debunked as evidence pointing to Russia.
What do I read? I mostly focus on liberal vs. conservative. I focus on the smaller sites that are independent of US propaganda influence. My current list is on this downloadable page, which has RSS, WWW, and Twitter URLs: http://www.mediafire.com/file/15vubeeh3fxamcc/IndyNewsRSS.html Using RSS is the easiest way to keep up.
I just saw a website. Which I can’t recall, that has snopes more center.
Great work on media bias chart! Weasel Zippers should be added to beef up the right side of the chart. http://www.weaselzippers.us.
I would not have put CNN so far left, nor the Blaze so far right myself
Infowars doesn’t count as a journalistic enterprise, just the after affect of trump’s colon
Size boxes in relation to size of reported audience size. Or use some value in the boxes or color code them.
Yes! That is what is missing in how they are displayed. I was wondering if the ones at the top had more viewers than those down below, but I suspect Infowars, for example, is one of the largest that way, so would be good to know and see.
WSJ is closer to the center (at least their news is). The Hill has moved much further left. I don’t think InfoWars and Zero Hedge even belong on here – they are not really media. Also, the Economist is definitely left of the center line. It is sad to see the Atlantic so far left. They were just slightly left of center when I first started reading it.
I think the important thing here is that news shouldn’t isn’t biased, its simply news. It should be reported by all sources objectively to the best of the rep9orters ability leaving the interpretation and conclusions to the reader or viewer.
The Washington Post should be much further left. Practically unreadable at this point.
Great graphic. Probably important to gravitate toward sources on or closer to the center to help in the search for truth.
WSJ should be center.Yes the Hill has gone left.
Looks accurate with the notable exceptions of both Rolling Stone and Mother Jones which should be depicted even further to the Left.
Just about spot on. I think Buzzfeed should go further left and Dailymail a little further right but aside from that it’s the best chart I’ve seen on the internet
Looks about right, but in all honesty I’m much more familiar with right side than left, except for NYT, which I just cannot give up regardless of how insanely liberal it gets. Do read several of the major sources on left but usually get there via RealClearPolitics, which is doing its job right smack in the middle!
I would have put Reason.com in its own chart (orbit). Love it but hard for me to fit it into left or right category.
The news side of Wall Street Journal most definitely belongs at least as far left as Bloomberg, if not further.
Telemundo should be a bit more to the left.
ESPN absolutely belongs to the extreme left.
The L.A. Times should be as far left as your graph allows.
Where should the Financial Times be placed in this chart?
The Economist, as a British publication, is only “on the right” in the context of British politics. In the US, it is center-left, as it approves of all the center-left policies (nationalized health care, membership in the EU, deferral to “international organizations, etc.) that would make an American conservative puke.
The Wall Street Journal has a conservative editorial page (except for their open borders insanity), but the news division is leftist, equivalent to the Washington Post or Bloomberg.
The Intercept is far left.
Reuters is left-of-center, not in the middle. Numerous Reuters stories have been shown to be skewed over the years, again because it is based in Britain where “right” and “left” mean different things than in the US.
The Huffington Post should be middle-left, not far-left. They actually have some conservative voices, believe it or not.
The Hill is more to the left. WSJ is not right but rather left. Only the editorial page is right.
I like the idea of the second dashed line to delineate outright non-factual propaganda. I think the graphic might be better served as a quadrant matrix, i.e. left – right and then a second section below the line to indicate those bodies who actively collude with the political arms to promote stories, leak information, etc. Certainly CNN’s collusion in the 2016 elections (story vetting, debate questions, townhall setups, etc) would qualify it here.
The Weekly Standard, National Review and Red State are establishment media. Not far right.
InfoWars is not “right.” They should have their own category for ‘Garbage.’
:-)!!!!
CNBC on the left, add FOX Business (FBN) to the right
Are there any daily papers between either coast that deserve to be listed?
Chicago Tribune? Houston Post? They are the third and fourth most populous U.S. cities
I think you can add the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) to the far left. Watched a Youtube of their 2016 election night. Everyone on the show looked as if their pet just died. They didn’t even try to hide it. It was pretty funny. Also as someone else mentioned, ESPN.
Daily Beast should change places with USNWR. The Economist conservative? Ironically the American Conservative should be nearer the middle right.
I DON’T SEE THE WASHINGTON TIMES, WASHINGTON EXAMINER, FREEBEACON & IF YOUR GOING TO INCLUDE INFOWARS YOU SHOULD THROW INTELLIHUB AS WELL!!!
NOT COUNTING THE ONES ON THE CENTERLINE I COUNTED 35 PLACES ON THE RIGHT SIDE & 62 ON THE LEFT SIDE (+/- 1). TO ME THAT MEANS SOMEBODY’S FUNDING A WHOLE LOT LEFT-WING IDEOLOGY! NO WONDER THIS COUNTRY IS AS BAD AS SHAPE AS SHE’S IN. WE KNOW GEORGE SORO’S IS FUNDING THE LEFT WITH LOTS OF CASH. SOME SAY THAT THOSE
TWO KOCH BROTHERS ARE HELPING OUT ON THE RIGHT BUT I DON’T BELIEVE AS MUCH AS PEOPLE THINK. WHAT SAY YOU???
SORRY I FORGOT SOMETHING! IF YOU WANT TO FIND OUT IF ALL OF THE WARS & REVOLUTIONS, DEPRESSIONS & LOTS OF OTHER BAD STUFF AS ALL BEEN PLANED OUT
THERE’S A BOOK CALLED “THE UNSEEN HAND”. YOU CAN CHECK IT OUT HERE.
https://www.amazon.com/Unseen-Hand-Introduction-Conspiratorial-History/dp/0961413506/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491796369&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=A+CONSPHERERATORIAL+VIEW+OF+HISTORY%2F+RALPH+EPPERSON
Hey Jim, Is your CAPS KEY stuck? Please stop SHOUTING!
ZeroHedge may be on the “Right” but not that far to the “Right”. More like Barrons .. just slightly right of center.
You need to size the icons to the number of hits. Millions are being propogandized by the WaPo, NYT, MSN, etc.
I think that’s a great idea to see what sites get most visitors. Doubt Sharyl has a research asst these days for that kind of dog work, tho!
Commentary Magazine?
Also I question how to include something like Reason, which explicitly rejects this left-right paradigm. That’s conceptually very different from “moderate.”
So much of what is considered “left of center” including the Clintons and the Democratic Party are at best center and I would even say rightist. Corporate hawkishness is the determining factor for me. I’d put RT, Truthout, Counterpunch, Democracy Now on the left. Mainstream media is rightist, even though they appear to be more liberal than what you have on the right. This kind of continuum as a fluid center which as it moves with time and zeitgeist shifts the definitions of right and left. Ike and Nixon would be left of center, now, and yet not at all leftist, per se.
God starter,hill left,Brietbart left,where is Newsbud?
There is nothing central about CSPAN. . . it’s moderators all seem like leftists, their selecting phone calls based on party ruined the station for me more than a decade ago. The callers on
the GOP lines and those on the ‘RAT line are all ‘RATs. Geographic lines were much better.
I consider the network unwatchable except for Q&A and monthly Book Notes.
I would nudge AP over further to the left. They love to police speech.
And where is Reuters? So far left that they cannot fit on the chart? If so, bravo!
Relatively accurate overall. Mediaite Matters is a fair bit more to the left. As others have said so are the so called “Fact Checkers” more to the left. Reuters is maybe only marginally better than A.P, so again a bit more to the left. CNBC a tiny bit more to the center. Daily Beast more to the left. Regardless this is largely accurate and a good base line for the uninformed, especially those few that still somehow think the “mainstream media” is down the middle..
The Federalist should be mentioned as should aggregator sites Memeorandum (centre-left) and RealClearPolitics (centre-right).
I’d like to see the size of each source reflect its reach or circulation number. Hence, for example, HotAir and American Thinkre would each be tiny compared with the New York Times or the WaPo. It would give viewer a better sense of scale between right-leaning sources and those on the left.
I would put the Wall Street Journal a bit closer to center.
Why are the media organizations stacked like this? Is there any reason behind having something like Stars and Stripes at the bottom next to Infowars and Variety? It seems difficult to compare good military reporting with Internet garbage and celebrity coverage. Might be confusing for somebody who is not familiar with all the sources. I’m guessing it has to do with name recognition by the public?
Reality check. The majority of the media in the U.S. is controlled by the Left. It was designed that way many, many years ago. My only relative comment to this chart is this. If someone is watching ANY media outlet in order to find or determine their political stance. They’re in trouble and the Left is winning. My concerns as they relate to government. #1 Will you Sharyl receive justice for what the corrupt government did to you? #2 Will myself and millions of others receive any justice in what the corrupt government has done to us over the last eight years?
This chart is mostly accurate. The changes I’d make are: Huff Post should be literally sliding off the left edge. Snopes, Fact Check, Politifact and Pew Research should be under Politico. Christian Science Monitor should be almost dead center. WSJ, Wash Times and NY Post should touch the center line.
MSNBC fired all the Liberals and has spent the past few years hiring Centrists and Right Wingers.
MSNBC along with CNN are Center at best.
This chart might be even more illuminating if the size of the box for each media outlet were proportional to its circulation or other measure audience. My guess is that it would tilt a bit more to the left on a weighted basis.
I agree with “Jon D”…its as close to how I think than anything I’ve seen.
No TheResurgent? No Conservative Review? I would argue the Washington Examiner also qualifies for right of center info.
Anyone who says the National Review is not conservative is a Trump Kool-Aid drinker.
Cheryl this is a good project & I know just how to fix this chart to make it accurate – On the left just put the label “fake news”, & on top of CNN put the label “very fake news” .. JK 🙂 .. Hey BTW where is fox business? Good team, good shows .. For the next iteration of this chart you should have total viewership/print distribution totals on each side. This way you can demonstrate or show just how unbalanced the overall biased coverage is .. That would show the true disadvantage of free media the left receives. List their contributions and party affiliations. Then the following iteration you can add in all the day time & night time talk shows to show the additional free media bias for the left. Then you can next add in the Hollywood hypocrites & music industry bias to show the real up hill battle conservatives have to get their voices out .. Lastly list all the colleges and their liberal vs. conservative leanings/teachings – this is really where the radical alt left liberal indoctrination starts.
Ooops .. I meant *Sharyl .. was writing email to Cheryl
The Chicago Tribune should be directly under the LA Times. To the right of them should be the Chicago Suntimes.
ZeroHedge should be under the DailyMail at worst.
Newsweek should be under Vanity Fair.
AP and BBC News should swap positions.
WSJ should be placed on the line just like Reason.
Economist is a left wing rag. Barely readable any longer.
You should add the Canadian publications although your layout probably doesn’t reach far enough left. You don’t even know what is the truth any longer in Canada. Trump could cure cancer and the Globe & Mails first 5 stories would be negative trump. #fakenews is rampant in Canada
Where is refinery29? They are so bias, worse than people rag mag.
Mother Jones should be far left.
Huge circulation in New England: Boston Globe-left and Boston Herald- right.
Fox News is still on the right- despite Shepard Smith.
What? No Full Measure????
Overall, I would say it looks fairly accurate. OAN in my opinion is not that far right. It sure solidifies the fact it’s nearly impossible to get “hard” news anymore.
I would like to see an * on each Soros funded purely Fascist Socialist Propaganda outlet.
I would add RT to the far left and Independent Journal Review to the middle right.
I’ve always considered The Atlantic to be quite moderate, maybe just left of center.
Looks pretty accurate. Columbia Journalism Review farther left than Media Matters is funny as hell, but I can’t dispute it.
I see your chart as having a slight problem. It is symmetrical, the same distance on the left as the right. I see the media companies much further to the left than the conservative media on the right. Suggesting an asymmetrical chart with a 4X modifier for the left side. That would be closer to representing what is really out there.
I was thinking the left horizontal axis was a log scale while the right is linear. Then it seems about right.
I think the chart format is too limiting. It should be a 4-quadrant maybe…. with the X-axis being liberal/conservative and the Y-axis being something like globalist/nationalist? Someone probably has a better idea…. But, that would allow you to, for example, have InfoWars and National review in the same half, but in polar opposite quadrants. That would be more accurate.
yes, I think that would do it. There has to be some basis for the order top to bottom on Y axis. Also sizing box relative to audience size.
Reuters should move left. The Economist should definitely move left.
I would add “Weasel Zippers” to the Right side.
Adding theconservativetreehouse.com to the right would be great.
It’s hard to find a website that is as well sourced and deeply researched by it’s main editor, Sundance.
Without this website and it’s ‘Treepers’, it’s highly likely George Zimmerman would be on death row and the cop from the ‘Ferguson’ incident might be as well.
Worth a look.
One aspect that should be considered is the size of each organization’s reach, i.e., viewers/readers of the bias they put out. The Left has far greater impact in their brainwashing effect. Show their size by making their emblems the proportionate size of their reach. This scaling would demonstrate how disadvantaged the Right is, plus you can throw the Left’s dominance in education exposure, Hollywood and Entertainment and the picture would look more bleak than this chart shows.
Missing among the broadcast news outlets is the PBS NewsHour, at one time renowned for its reasonably fair and balanced reporting back when it was the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. These days, it could just as well be titled “The Mother Jones NewsHour”, from its discussions of social issues and pro-left politics, and from one of the bigger biases out there: in 20+ years, they have not featured a single skeptic climate scientist on their program to discuss any science viewpoints from that side of the issue, as contrasted with the 39 times they’ve permitted unquestioned viewpoints from IPCC / NASA / NOAA scientists.
This chart is a good point of reference for those news consumers who wish to know the ideological “bent” of the news organizations reporting of which they are listening. That said, I would make two suggestions…..
a. Add Dailywire.com and WND.com to the right side of your column.
b. Organize your chart by category, for example
Television News Organizations (or primarily television news)
Newspaper/Periodical News sites
Web based news organizations
After seeing this post, you can move reason.com off the list entirely http://reason.com/blog/2017/01/10/trump-selects-anti-vaccination-kook-robe
The Economist should be moved way over to the left, the WSJ another inch to the left.s
Sheryl,
This is great. Now we need another chart showing all those in congress who are married or related to someone in the different news media organizations. It’s no wonder we cannot get the real story. Did Susan Rice leak to her husband the unmasked names? Funny how the media never reveals these connections.
Ace of Spades should be on that list.
To add, Hot Air should probably move a tick leftwards, and RedState many ticks left.
I gave up on them when they jumped the shark in the primaries, so they may have changed, but back then they were pushing hard for liberalism and Hillary.
Ace of Spades HQ could be added to this. On the right
Speaking as a Brit, The Guardian / BBC line up solidly with the NYT and WaPo on anything of consequence, so I think they should be moved over to the left to join their buddies.
If “The Observer” means the UK newspaper, then this is just the “Sunday” version of the Guardian, so should be over to the left a bit too. (Find them at guardian.com/oberserver)
I’d love to see the chart with each publication’s quadrangle sized according to its INFLUENCE on public opinion! For example NYTimes might be one of the largest boxes on the Left and Fox News might be comparably large on the Right
After looking at the other links I think yours is best in design. A few things about placement though:
First the most glaring need to change is putting Reuters in the center. It should be to the left as far as you have the WP and NYT. Similarly for UPI, but no need to go that far left for them, just decidedly left of the line like where you have Yahoo!.
The only sources at the center should be C-Span (although I could appreciate an argument that would move it in the same position as The Hill) Roll Call, Stars and Stripes, and Military Times.
Forbes needs to go to the left of the line like where you have The Hill.
Barrons needs to go to the left like where you have People.
I don’t know “reason.com” so I’ll trust your judgement there.
RCP needs to be to the left though, like where IBT is.
I can’t quite read what the black bannered source in the middle is, “media-something” but again up to you.
Factcheck.org needs to be moved decisively to the left of the line there is nothing unbiased about that source although I’ll grant it’s not as bad as Reuters, AP, LAT, WP, NYT and the rest of the networks. So I’d move it to the same place as The Intercept or maybe CNBC.
The WSJ needs to be moved to the left of the line, like where you have Poynter.
Yes it’s become that bad and such pervasive leftism in the media that there are only 4(3?) that deserve the title “unbiased”, which is what I assume placement on the left-right line means.
It’s a great graphic though really better than the others you linked to, the design is much easier to read and digest.
A few thoughts:
– Reuters should be on the far Left – they have never been MOR.
– Weekly Standard and Daily Signal should swap spots – WS is for Big Government, DS is not.
– The Blaze should move to the Left at least one spot.
– WSJ should move to the middle, and maybe even a tick into Left territory.
– Add Investor’s Business Daily to the right side, probably underneath Frontpage (in that range, at least).
– ABC should be far Left – the guy that runs it is married to Susan Rice, so ’nuff said.
– Any of the so-called fact-checking orgs should be placed fully on the Left, as opposed to touching the midline.
– Yahoo should be on the far Left – I have never seen anything resembling conservatism from their “reporting”.
– If you are going to include Buzzfeed and Mashable on this chart then you may as well add Twitchy, but add them on the right, maybe second from the Right.
What I’d really like to see is a list of reporters and their connection to politicians, movers and shakers.
For instance Andrea Mitchell married to ex head of the Fed Alan Greenspan.
I know there are many.
Excellent work, that said you will always have someone critiquing the location of any particular outlet depending their own left-right proclivities.
I would now color code these by type of media (print, network tv, pay tv, and radio) and age (size of logo perhaps). Then we could clearly see how the left has enjoyed the media as a fourth part of government and propaganda arm.
If you want to see some ideas on how to better present your data go to information is beautiful (http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/). It is a lefty site yet they have very interesting, innovative and intuitive ways to look at data such as yours. Here is an example: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/left-vs-right-world/
Thanks for all you do.
Given that everyone I know on the left hates the BBC for being a rightwing government mouthpiece rag, and everyone I know on the right complains about it being a lefty liberal crybaby rag I think the BBC is probably doing a better job of being central than this implies.
Although since everyone thinks it’s biased against them it probably won’t last that long in this day and age.
It’s probably a bit more left as the UK is also a bit more left.
Any lifestyle mag published by Conde Naste (e.g., bond appetite, Traveler) should appear in the left column. Subtle leftist content.
Christian Science Monitor on the right? Hahahaha! They’ve been in the CFR for decades and total globalists.
NY Post should be on the LEFT side, too.
One commenter above asked what does left or right mean. There would be as much disagreement about those definitions as about their media outlets. When I was teaching US History/Current Events to my eight graders, I made a similar chart with a center line, a left, and a right. I had about a dozen issues listed, like: role of government, gun control, abortion, homosexual marriage, taxes, education, control of business, and so forth. I put Democrats just to the left of center and Republicans just to the right. To the left of Democrats, I put Greens, to their left I put Socialists, then communists/anarchists which comprised the extreme left. To the right of Republicans I put Libertarians, then fascists/Nazis. Under each party, I put its succinctly-worded position on each issue. Students then circled the positions they most agreed with, and that determined their position on the spectrum. If most of their positions were to the left, they were liberals. If most were to the right, they were conservatives. If it were a spread, they were moderates, etc. It worked well, gave them a baseline from which to understand terms used in political debate.
Reuters should be two notches further left. And their headline writers (maybe you need two categories for each media outlet?) should be four notches to the left.
Ms. Attkisson,
How does it feel to be irrelevant, continuously? You were fired like a dog in 2014 by CBS and even Fox News will not employ you. Now you are complaining about Media bias. From who? Also, I look forward to your upcoming Book to be on the New York Best Seller list……NOT! Let me ask you, where is your ground support for this pathetic blog. 14 commenters here……7 commenters there. Tell me now…..why do you think your voice matters? Please respond.
Yes please add The Federalist, Powerline, Watts Up With That (climate change), Lucianne (news aggregate), Long Wars Journal, Jihad Watch, and City Journal (from Manhattan Institute). Thank you!
Wouldn’t an easier measure of bias (for some sites, at least) be who they’ve endorsed in the last five or so Presidential elections?
I would add The Resurgent to this chart.
THis is the most fair representation of political positioning of media organizations that has ever been developed. Kudos to you!
In another chart it would be a tremendous value to readers if work could begin on an accuracy in media chart. No matter the political leaning of an organization how accurate are they in their reporting.
Looks about right, however with the changes I expect from the younger Murdoch’s I would see Fox starting a move to left of center within 1 year.
When the observer must determine which story is real and which is fake, then it must all be viewed as fake.
ESPN has tried to remove itself from any political discussion to focus only on sports. They recently removed one of their female on-air personalities, Sage Steele, because she mentioned on-air that she had been delayed by protesters while on her way to work. If that is their true intent they may not belong on your chart. Thx.
ESPN removes conservative commentators/reporters, but not liberal ones.
Great charts and article, and great comments. My 2 cents:
— McClatchy needs to be further left — either middle or middle/right
— Weekly Standard is too much right; needs to be a little to the left
— Christian Science Monitor needs to be further left — it should not be to the right of WSJ
— No way the Economist is to the right of center, if even that
— I can’t tell what the left of center 3rd from the bottom entry is — Hollywood Reporter?
— The Intercept, Business Insider and IBT should be slightly to the right of Poynter
— Daily Beast and USNWR should be at the same level
— Rolling Stone and Wired should be just a little bit to the right of where they are now
Axios
https://www.axios.com/
Another thing that might help the usefulness of your chart would be to provide a measure of objective distance from the centre line. One way of doing this might be to draw two vertical lines running down the chart on both the “left” and “right” sides. The inner line of each side would represent the barrier between those organizations who advocate no changes to the US constitution and those whose advocacy includes any constitutional amendments apart from the those in the bill of rights. The outer line on each side will separate groups who advocate constitutional amendments apart from the bill of rights from those who advocate changes to the bill of rights.
One other observation:
Like all your work, the chart is smart, honest and insightful. But I think you miss something that’s worth pointing out: A larger, “institutional” bias. When people criticize the “left leaning” MSM, they usually run through the list of ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, PBS, etc. But one thing that never gets pointed out is the “institutional bias” of Conde Nast and Hearst Publications.
You break the titles out individually in the chart, but consider Conde Nast: Vanity Fair, Vogue, GQ, The New Yorker, Glamour, Teen Vogue, Wired, and even Town and Country all lean very far to the left. It’s all blessed by Anna Wintour.
At Hearst, it’s Esquire, Cosmo, Popular Science, and a half-dozen other publications.
I don’t know how you would accommodate this on the chart, but it’s quite real, and they all speak in one voice on politics.
Showing C-SPAN and Roll Call as dead center is incorrect. And FactCheck.org should sit squarely left of the center line.
Perhaps next time the Y-axis could be used to indicate accuracy based on retractions and refutation from other news outlets and sources.
That might be a useful tool for those who want to get their news from both sides, but wants to make sure the outlet isn’t loaded with “fake news.”
Nice chart — much more accurate than most. However, I would put Reason as much to the left of the line as you now have it to the right of the line. They have been moving leftward for a number of years now and completely lost their minds when Trump was elected.
Christian Science Monitor should be moved left center-center left. This new site has not challenged progressive ideas as much as it used to 10-15 years ago. It accepted climate change as a fact – not challenging it, for example.
Love the chart. Did not see BBC, Investors Daily, or Business Week.
BBC middle top left…
Thanks for sharing this chart on Twitter! It’s very good and some of the comments here offer productive revisions or additions.
I agree that Axios would be a great addition to the chart. Axios has quickly become a go-to source.
Please explain how you placed the sources either high or low on the chart — was it based on your perception of their accuracy?
Where does ‘Truth’ fit in on this spectral display? Or is it in the ‘eye of the beholder’?
I question the validity of any media bias chart that doesn’t have the AP at or very near the center. The whole structure of the AP is built around reporting the facts as quickly and concisely as possible.
Ranking a news outlet by its consumers of the information from that outlet does a disservice to the efforts of the outlet to be true to the facts. Having the Hill to the center of the AP makes me question your methodology. Listing the Economist to the right does a disservice to that publication. And really, FOX news should have two entries. The FOX news of the actual reporters and a seperate FOX entry for the “FOX and friends” echo chamber.
Your chart is about as accurate as the INFOWars chart. At least they got the axis named right. (Freedom???)
I would consider CSMonitor centric, slightly left.
Also, American Conservative can be pretty contrarian, and I’d tend to put them center, center right.
You may be interested in one of the fundamental reasons WHY most of the traditional information sources are left-leaning.
https://merionwest.com/2018/07/07/all-the-fake-news-thats-fit-to-print/
Imprimis?
As much as I love this graph to visualize bias (as I see its purpose), I think it is mis-labelled. Instead of a central “50 yard line” separating Left from Right and measuring relative distance for each, it should instead be a Far Left and Far Right BOUNDARY line on each side, representing Lies and Delusion (Left) and Truth, Fact, Reality (Right). Centerline positioning gives the impression that being in center is valid and fair, when that by itself is somewhat misleading.
From Top to Bottom should show daily or annual readership volumes, however you want to measure that, so long as it is consistent.
In my view, this is yet another measure of the battle between darkness and light, manifest through media sources and the supporters they want to attract.
Wall Street Journal needs to be split between news and opinion. The news side and opinion side have nothing to do with each other. News is far left, Opinion is on the right.
Gr.eat chart. Well done. Recommend adding Investors Business Daily on the right. Their editorials are insightful and well thought out.
Umm, so what scientific method was used to dictate what is left vs right? Just your gut feeling?
This is interesting but, I think, over simplified. The most important differentiator is not left vs right bias, but whether or not to trust both the information provided in each publication (story, essay, video, etc) and the assumptions the writer/producers makes about what the audience knows or believes. The Econmist, for example, assumes that the reader shares a far left understanding of history (including yesterday’s stories) and then shades its stories to elide conflicting information and make the reader feel smart for accepting its one sided editorial stance.
As others suggest a quadrant graph with trustworthiness as the vertical separator might help – but you might also want to consult a marketing/ stats person about using factor analysis and perhaps an interactive webpage to show this stuff.
PBS NewsHour. Objective, says I.
Would like to see this chart with total reach (i.e. number of viewers/readers) represented by the size of their logo. This would be more reflective of the level of bias on each side of the spectrum.
I would place The Atlantic closer to the center. Reasons:
(1) The Atlantic prefers to explain situations, context, and cause and effect. That inherently moderates the content.
(2) They have several writers such as Conor Friedersdorf who argue against left-wing positions at times.
In my view, this places them to the right of Slate, which reliably adopts the position on the left, and frequently provides information only favorable to the argument.
Could be included: The Week, Christian Science Monitor.
Great idea.
Some websites suggestions: The Gateway Pundit (far right), Fox Business (Right), The Libertarian Republic (right), and Antiwar (Left).
Add Twitter and Facebook were many get their news.
List the top right and left websites by alexa rating.