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.”
Showing C-SPAN and Roll Call as dead center is incorrect. And FactCheck.org should sit squarely left of the center line.
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.
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.
Axios
https://www.axios.com/
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
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.
When the observer must determine which story is real and which is fake, then it must all be viewed as fake.
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.
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.
I would add The Resurgent to this chart.
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?
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Any lifestyle mag published by Conde Naste (e.g., bond appetite, Traveler) should appear in the left column. Subtle leftist content.
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.
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 (https://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: https://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/left-vs-right-world/
Thanks for all you do.
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.