Here's a more up-to-date version (July 2020), and this one has some quantitative assessments of bias and quality (reliability).
![[Image: jna3q6xbaqfmpgnxxisx.png?auto=format&fit...q=65&w=800]](https://imgix.lifehacker.com.au/content/uploads/sites/4/2020/07/11/jna3q6xbaqfmpgnxxisx.png?auto=format&fit=fill&q=65&w=800)
More media items are included than in the last one, and media sources can be shown for political bias. I would guess that Vanessa Otero of Ad Fontes Media uses a political scale analogous to Charles Cook's Partisan Voting Index, which can assess a state or Congressional district on how it would vote in an even election. The 2020 Presidential election split 51-47, roughly, and Ms. Otero splits the political spectrum from
"Most Extreme Left" (-27.5 to -38.5)
"Hyper-Partisan Left" (-16.5 to -27.5)
"Skews Left" (-5.5 to -16.5)
"Neutral" (-5.5 to +5.5)
"Skews Right" (+5.5 to +16.5)
"Hyper-Partisan Right" (+16.5 to +27.5)
"Most Extreme Right" (+27.5 to +38.5)
with what I would assess as characteristic states for positions on this spectrum based on the 2020 vote. Take away 2% from the Democratic edge for a state that voted for Biden or add 2% to the edge for a state that voted for Trump, and... well, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan are very close to the center. As a personal measure, "neutral" is about where one would not ordinarily know the political position of a person due to ambiguity. These days if you see someone like that, congratulate yourself for finding a genuine silver coin in your change. I am showing a range by how the states voted:
-38.5 District of Columbia
-27.5 (would have gone about 75-25 for Biden)
-16.5 Massachusetts
-5.5 New Mexico or Virginia
0 Michigan or Nevada
+5.5 Ohio
+16.5 Idaho
+27.5 (would have gone about 75-25 for Trump)
+38.5 (would have gone about 90-10 for Trump)
Original news reporting is generally not suitable for bias. Figuring that reporters for the AP wires are told to tell the story and not put any opinion into it, an AP wire about a fire at an animal shelter isn't going to have the reporter lamenting the horrible deaths of unfortunate puppy-dogs and kitty-cats. Someone else will do that, and do it well. Journalists getting original news, and the more in the raw as possible, don't get to show much bias.
Straight reporting of the news can include trying to flesh out a story (ABC, CBS, NBC). You will notice perhaps to your surprise that the Denver Post and the Houston Chronicle are closer to pure news than the New York Times -- let alone the Washington Post.
Here is a video of her methodology:
The green rectangle is for news generally purer than opinion. There might be some editorial bias due to the constituency, so the Wall Street Journal is more likely to skew right because its clientele is heavily investors. The Guardian is more likely to have a left bias... but neither with much compromise of the value of the news. Below news comes analysis, which can be in depth, which might dovetail with issues of public policy. Note well: the people who watch MSNBC do not watch FoX News; they live in very different universes. MSNBC viewers are more like the majority of people living in Massachusetts and FoX News viewers act more as if they live in Oklahoma.
The American electorate is highly polarized, so as media get away from pure reporting, news media and news quasi-media get increasingly biased and unreliable. The orange rectangle contains the upper zone of unreliable sources and manipulative propaganda. So, cite Breitbart or Daily Kos... and expect people who know what they are doing to say "offer a different source".
The red zone is.... awful. Either what was in the lower left zone in 2017 has become even more unhinged and disappeared into some zone of suspect survival. On the lower right is InfoWars, infamously biased and highly likely to offer a conspiracy story instead of any usable news. It's usually difficult to place the ideology of supermarket tabloids, but anyone who reads them seems to get dumber with every story.
...Maybe the distribution will change in America by 2022 as Donald Trump becomes increasingly irrelevant in American life.
.... not that it is any surprise, Alex Jones of Info Wars hates this assessment. He has his own chart, which may be good for some unintended laughter:
![[Image: MW-FC099_mapnew_20180228120101_NS.jpg?uu...8e992d421e]](https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2018/02/28/Photos/NS/MW-FC099_mapnew_20180228120101_NS.jpg?uuid=f467e122-1ca8-11e8-8507-9c8e992d421e)
Yeah, right. RT and Sputnik News may be state run (by a government that Freedom House considers "Not Free"), and is about as lacking in journalistic independence as the BBC, and conspiracy-theory promoters InfoWars and Prison Planet are models of journalistic integrity and independence. NPR and ABC News are tyranny?
More media items are included than in the last one, and media sources can be shown for political bias. I would guess that Vanessa Otero of Ad Fontes Media uses a political scale analogous to Charles Cook's Partisan Voting Index, which can assess a state or Congressional district on how it would vote in an even election. The 2020 Presidential election split 51-47, roughly, and Ms. Otero splits the political spectrum from
"Most Extreme Left" (-27.5 to -38.5)
"Hyper-Partisan Left" (-16.5 to -27.5)
"Skews Left" (-5.5 to -16.5)
"Neutral" (-5.5 to +5.5)
"Skews Right" (+5.5 to +16.5)
"Hyper-Partisan Right" (+16.5 to +27.5)
"Most Extreme Right" (+27.5 to +38.5)
with what I would assess as characteristic states for positions on this spectrum based on the 2020 vote. Take away 2% from the Democratic edge for a state that voted for Biden or add 2% to the edge for a state that voted for Trump, and... well, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan are very close to the center. As a personal measure, "neutral" is about where one would not ordinarily know the political position of a person due to ambiguity. These days if you see someone like that, congratulate yourself for finding a genuine silver coin in your change. I am showing a range by how the states voted:
-38.5 District of Columbia
-27.5 (would have gone about 75-25 for Biden)
-16.5 Massachusetts
-5.5 New Mexico or Virginia
0 Michigan or Nevada
+5.5 Ohio
+16.5 Idaho
+27.5 (would have gone about 75-25 for Trump)
+38.5 (would have gone about 90-10 for Trump)
Original news reporting is generally not suitable for bias. Figuring that reporters for the AP wires are told to tell the story and not put any opinion into it, an AP wire about a fire at an animal shelter isn't going to have the reporter lamenting the horrible deaths of unfortunate puppy-dogs and kitty-cats. Someone else will do that, and do it well. Journalists getting original news, and the more in the raw as possible, don't get to show much bias.
Straight reporting of the news can include trying to flesh out a story (ABC, CBS, NBC). You will notice perhaps to your surprise that the Denver Post and the Houston Chronicle are closer to pure news than the New York Times -- let alone the Washington Post.
Here is a video of her methodology:
The green rectangle is for news generally purer than opinion. There might be some editorial bias due to the constituency, so the Wall Street Journal is more likely to skew right because its clientele is heavily investors. The Guardian is more likely to have a left bias... but neither with much compromise of the value of the news. Below news comes analysis, which can be in depth, which might dovetail with issues of public policy. Note well: the people who watch MSNBC do not watch FoX News; they live in very different universes. MSNBC viewers are more like the majority of people living in Massachusetts and FoX News viewers act more as if they live in Oklahoma.
The American electorate is highly polarized, so as media get away from pure reporting, news media and news quasi-media get increasingly biased and unreliable. The orange rectangle contains the upper zone of unreliable sources and manipulative propaganda. So, cite Breitbart or Daily Kos... and expect people who know what they are doing to say "offer a different source".
The red zone is.... awful. Either what was in the lower left zone in 2017 has become even more unhinged and disappeared into some zone of suspect survival. On the lower right is InfoWars, infamously biased and highly likely to offer a conspiracy story instead of any usable news. It's usually difficult to place the ideology of supermarket tabloids, but anyone who reads them seems to get dumber with every story.
...Maybe the distribution will change in America by 2022 as Donald Trump becomes increasingly irrelevant in American life.
.... not that it is any surprise, Alex Jones of Info Wars hates this assessment. He has his own chart, which may be good for some unintended laughter:
Yeah, right. RT and Sputnik News may be state run (by a government that Freedom House considers "Not Free"), and is about as lacking in journalistic independence as the BBC, and conspiracy-theory promoters InfoWars and Prison Planet are models of journalistic integrity and independence. NPR and ABC News are tyranny?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
