Honestly, I'm hoping for a lot of derail. What do you use to check media? Or do you? How do you read? Zinn says "You can't stand still on a moving train" and Camus "All writing is philosophy", what is the role of bias in pluralism? What do you use to judge media bias anywhere in the world and where you live?
posted by rubatan at 10:23 PM on October 4 [1 favorite]

Funny first name that. "Ad", huh? Whelp, blame the parents.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 12:20 AM on October 5

Nerdsniped. Ad fontes “is a Latin expression which means ‘[back] to the sources.’" Advertise, on the other hand, “from Latin advertere ‘to direct one's attention to; give heed,’ literally ‘to turn toward,’ from ad ‘to, toward’ + vertere ‘to turn’.” I guess I could have just said “ad-“, but it would have seemed more “um actually” and less giddy needsniped-philology. I guess my reflex pathway for loving words and need for distraction had just the advantage it needed to win out… now I know. I’ve wondered about the same for ages.
posted by rubatan at 1:21 AM on October 5 [2 favorites]

I like Mike Caulfield's SIFT method for evaluating sources and information.

When I taught composition I would always be a little bit surprised by how many students thought that having a viewpoint and having a bias were the same thing, and having a viewpoint made a source unreliable. And I continue to be surprised by how many people want their news reporting to just have plain, dry facts, as if that insulates the news reporting from bias - when in fact, as soon as you have a human mind evaluating which facts to include and how to contextualize them, you have a bias.

Furthermore, hardly anybody talks about the bias that is shared by just about every news organization without regard to left or right: the bias toward getting as many viewers as possible and not pissing off advertisers.

I think the most useful thing I got out of Caulfield's work is thinking about how facts (or "facts") and news stories are used to prop up a specific worldview (I've posted this link here before, but here's Caulfield talking about the Springfield, OH pet-eating rumors for a good example). I am not interested in reading news stories that are intended to prop up the worldview that undocumented immigrants pose an outsize threat, or the worldview that we should be very worried about the existence of trans people.

But I think Caulfield would say that it's most important to have some skepticism for the stories that fit too conveniently into what I already believe, the stories that do a little too much to prove that my side is good and my opponents are bad. (So it would be nice if Republicans would stop continually proving themselves to be sex pests or heinously corrupt, but that's on them.)
posted by Jeanne at 5:26 AM on October 5 [9 favorites]

I've seen this chart before, and the problem I have with it is there's no indication of audience size. Alex Jones and FOX News have massive audiences, whereas Chapo Trap House and Thom Hartmann are tiny percentages of that. It also normalizes the "both sides do it" convention, implying the right and the left have their fringe elements, but I'd trust the journalistic integrity of Chapo over (looks at the right-wing equivalent) Laura fucking Ingraham any day. Also, Jimmy Dore is not left-wing--he's a walking avatar of the horseshoe theory.
posted by zardoz at 6:09 AM on October 5 [11 favorites]

Looking at this from the UK, if the Daily Mail and The Sun are considered just right of centre, either things are worse than I thought, or I have disagreements with the methods of categorization. Or both. It's both, isn't it?
posted by sarble at 6:26 AM on October 5 [8 favorites]

A couple pieces of criticism of this chart that I've come across over the years: ACRL, Tamara Pearson, Poynter.
posted by box at 6:56 AM on October 5 [7 favorites]

I trust Ad Fontes over Allsides. Allsides is a conservative effort to shift the Overton Window gently, which is why they only rate on political bias while omitting a factuality. A better alternative would ground.news.
posted by CynicalKnight at 8:21 AM on October 5 [3 favorites]

You know a chart is scientifically unassailable when it has a nice, idealized hump shape.

Also, apparently there is an indication of audience size if you "upgrade" and what you definitely are looking for in a serious watchdog organization concerned about journalism quality and its effect on public discourse is the implementation of a paywall.
posted by axiom at 8:22 AM on October 5 [4 favorites]

I hate this damn chart, because -- despite the caveat in the OP, that "centrism is a type of bias" -- the chart is, absolutely every time I've seen it posted on social media by someone, being used to promote the idea that political centrism is to be equated with factual objectivity. The function of the thing is just what it does. And it does promote that idea, inevitably so, and perhaps even despite the intentions of the creators, because it gets posted online in decontextualized form.
posted by demonic winged headgear at 8:47 AM on October 5 [10 favorites]

This graph is bad and it should feel bad.
posted by grimace636 at 2:03 PM on October 5 [7 favorites]

The Hill to the left of center? WTF???
posted by hat_eater at 2:55 PM on October 5 [1 favorite]

I fully endorse John Brown's attempt to lead an armed overthrow of the institution of chattel slavery using violence.

Where does this put me on this chart?
posted by AlSweigart at 3:45 PM on October 5 [6 favorites]

This chart has been awful. How does Ground News do this? They survey a much wider array of outlets, and measure multiple kinds of outlets.

Ground News doesn't rank Jimmy Dore, it does not have commentary sites. But all news stories with Jimmy Dore are 100% right wing sources. So whatever analysis this site is using, it is vulnerable to the classic "but I'm a national socialist" or " I'm an anarcho-captialist" ideological confusion of the right wing

The Hill is listed as "Center, Mixed Factuality"

How do these metrics rate Channel 5 News?
posted by eustatic at 4:02 PM on October 5 [1 favorite]

Great links above. I find myself wondering about the general critique that the Ad Fontes chart promotes a normativized "middle", intentionally or not. Re: poynter "Why do media bias charts exist?"

"...consumers take too much of the 'news' they encounter as impartial. When people are influenced by undisclosed political bias in the news they consume, 'that’s pretty bad for democratic politics, pretty bad for our country to have people be consistently misinformed and think they’re informed,'"

In an era of purportedly increasing political polarization, why is the ethics here the opposite, for media to often hide behind a middle "we don't have a bias." 100+ years ago US Newspapers all had well identified biases. Small town would have two papers, so you could chose the one with the perspective you trust/desired. I'm not sure if anyone ever expected say, the NYT to be unbiased, but--there seems enough shocked-outrage-surprise they've held to a fairly conservative neoliberal outlook on matters of gender and foreign policy--I think they would like you to think they are. Is the "un-biased" value a response to polarization? Or is "we're unbiased" a truncheon to manufacture consent for the status quo?
In discussions of the Fourth Estate/Fourth branch of government, I always found it odd that another branch was "the people." Is then media, or any other real or pseudo branch of government, a check on the people?''

In fairness to CEO Vanessa Otero, it does seem she's been responsive to the critiques, adjusting overtime. From the ACRL comments exchange, including Otero, is good (and entertaining):

"The 'middle' represents three distinct concepts. A source can be in the middle if it is either 1) minimally biased, 2) centrist, or 3) balanced. The 'middle' isn’t necessarily the 'best.' This Chart just tries to capture what the 'middle' of US contemporary politics IS, without taking a position on what it 'should be.'

But the fact it presents a fairly smooth curve suggests, even in its most charitable reading, increased bias (left or right) decreases reliability. If "centrist" is a well-investigated bias you'd expect to see plenty of unreliable sources there too, so it seems something is missing here.
posted by rubatan at 4:44 PM on October 5 [1 favorite]

Ok, Ground News is summarizing these sites listed in OP.

Here's a profile page for the Hill, and how it compares across the sources in the OP.

Here's Democracy Now

Here's the Economist

it seems like even right wing stuff is listed as left wing, if US democrats read it?

But Media Bias / Fact check, although very web 1.0, seems to have the most depth to their analysis. It seems like this site is probably punching above their weight in the database, compared to the other sites.

They have a rating for Neutral Ground News, a website with a readership in the high thousands. That seems unnecessarily deep on this topic. I'm worried.

They've even got a link to "Genres", which gets at some thing I had thought about, that different sites are going to develop expertise and factuality in different topics

The Hill, for example, can tell you how some people in DC are talking about something, which is more useful than it should be, but I would not rely on it for local issues in your area, unless you are visiting your Senator's office in town.
posted by eustatic at 4:50 PM on October 5 [3 favorites]

"it seems like even right wing stuff is listed as left wing, if US democrats read it?" I think this has long been a critique of the US-center relative to the global-center.* {"pinko" is heard yelled from the back.../s}

*I tried to make a FPP about this recently, but it similarly relied on two-dimensional political-spectrum graphs so I chickened out
posted by rubatan at 5:02 PM on October 5 [1 favorite]

feels like, the spectrum is less "left vs right" and more "annoyingly liberal vs outright fascist lies"

anything on the margin is going to be difficult to chart, granted, but i will again stump for MediaBiasFactcheck over the original chart.

the original chart rates Counter-Punch, an organization that has reporters on payroll, they are annoyingly liberal and socialist i suppose, but listed on the same level of factuality as Climate News, a site that is basically just an aggregator and opinion site. There are zero photographs and CAPS LOCK.

I am not going to read Counter-Punch because the nugget of information in their reporting is enveloped in 3 layers of emotion, and apparently they were infiltrated by Russia, but there is new information there, if you are in the mood. They hire field reporters. Russia had to pay a someone to fake the work of a journalist, who had to make pitches, instead of just paying the american show hosts. Counter-Punch retracted all the articles of the agent, but left links to them up.

"Climate News" is a site seemingly there to pull SEO away from "Inside Climate News", although Google will not return it to you via search, and contains headlines like

"Corporate media relying on very recent history to claim global warming – but with a longer view of time, it’s clear that human-caused climate change is a HOAX
09/26/2024 / By Ethan Huff"
and
"Sermon 5: Mike Adams discusses God’s breath of life and the satanic war against CARBON
09/26/2024 / By Kevin Hughes"

MediaBiasFactcheck lists them as "Tin Foil Hat"

and MediaBiasFactcheck lists counter-punch as credible but highly biased

and that just makes more sense.

So, even though MediaBiasFactcheck isn't analyzing left vs right on an ideological basis, there's just more dimension to their evaluations that the 2-D chart may never capture.
posted by eustatic at 6:19 PM on October 5 [2 favorites]

Ugh, this bullshit again.

Their methods are bullshit, their business model means they get paid for bullshit, the overall concept of bias they employ is bullshit, and it actively makes people stupider about how media bias functions.

Since plenty of other people have already pointed out the same criticisms that come out every year (for eight years now), and I'm a couple beers in, I'll note that objective news has always been an illusion, but it's an illusion that serves the notion of quantifiable objectivity under capitalism, and is on the ass-dragging end of a modernist approach to epistemology and factuality, despite (at the very least) 50 or so years of aggressive post-modern critique of these basic assumptions.

Ad Culus here gets paid primarily by businesses who want to reach the broadest partisan spread with their advertising without sacrificing their own business credibility by running ads next to magnet pillows or Holocaust denial podcasts because they believe that will cost them money. Which is why they will pay for someone to meet that ideological need of having a graph they can show to their clients that places their ad strategy on an ideological rainbow and justifies the spend strategy they've embraced. Ad Fontes? Sed cuias bona?

SIFT works. Even just doing a second read on any article and thinking of all the places you agree and wondering "How would I disprove this?" works.

But then, since this has been posted year after year, y'all know this.
posted by klangklangston at 8:44 PM on October 5 [3 favorites]

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