Ad Fontes Media Newsletter

 

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No, Our Diverse Analysts Don’t Agree on Politics, and That’s Good

We’ve received much criticism over the years about our Media Bias Chart® and the placement of particular news sources within it. That’s OK; we welcome your comments on our work. But some of our most vocal critics have expressed disbelief that our politically diverse team can actually reach a consensus on the bias and reliability ratings of particular sources, especially hyper-polarizing news content. 

What these critics don’t understand is that our analysts don’t have to agree on the issues to do this work. It’s not their job to agree whether, for example, abortion restrictions are good, if George Santos should be expelled from Congress, or whether the U.S. should approve more funding for Ukraine. Their job is to agree whether particular articles or episodes about these issues are unbiased and reliable. Our analysts analyze; they don’t advocate.

Our work is founded on the belief that individuals with varying political views can collaborate effectively. Click here to read more about our commitment to diversity of thought and how our analysts try to resolve disagreements through discussion.

Media Bias Chart Dissects Perspectives of Henry Kissinger’s Legacy

American diplomat Henry Kissinger died on Nov. 29, 2023, at the age of 100, and media coverage of Kissinger’s death, life, and legacy was extensive. Analysts took a closer look at several of these articles in last week’s Topic of the Week.

Each week, Ad Fontes Media chooses a widely covered trending news topic to share insight into how our analysts rank news coverage for the Media Bias Chart. To do this, we select six articles reporting on the same story from different outlets to show how each treated the subject.

The articles rated by our analysts were “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies” from Rolling Stone, “Henry Kissinger, ‘dependable and distinctive’ voice on foreign affairs, dies at 100” from The Washington Times, “How Henry Kissinger shaped the Cold War world” from The Spectator, “Henry Kissinger, a statesman who indelibly shaped US foreign policy, dies at 100” from USA Today, “Henry Kissinger’s legacy is best measured in bodies” from MSNBC, and “Henry Kissinger was a trusted confidant to President Nixon until the bitter, bizarre end” from The Associated Press. The bias and reliability scores for each of these articles can be found on our Topic of the Week page.

Click here to read what our analysts thought about the left-leaning bias of the articles from MSNBC and Rolling Stone.

Media Bias Chart Debuts 10 Shows on December’s Podcast Edition

According to the 25th Anniversary of The Infinite Dial by Edison Research, approximately 90 million Americans are weekly podcast listeners. These listeners are consuming multiple podcasts, and average nine podcast episodes per week. News is the second most popular genre for podcast listeners, with comedy being the No. 1 genre. That is a lot of news being consumed.

If you regularly get your news from podcasts, it is important to know whether the news you’re consuming is biased and reliable. This is where the podcast edition of our monthly static media bias charts can help.

Click here to read more about the podcast edition of the Media Bias Chart and the 10 sources that made their debut this month.

Ad Fontes Media in the News

Ad Fontes Media in academic publications

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