alpha

About Us (Frequently Asked Questions)

How biased am I? Are my news sources biased?

There are many different ways in which a news article can be biased. Some are apparent, such as using loaded intead of neutral words; some are much more difficult to detect, event for a seasoned "news junkie", such as deciding to include or exclude certain details from the reporting. Here is a great article on the different ways an article can introduce bias. By contrasting different news sources' reporting on the same events we make biases apparent.

It is our hope that we can thus see the biases in ourselves, and start to understand.

Is my news page at BiasWatch.News personalized?

There is no personalization in BiasWatch.News content. You don't have to worry about the filter bubble here.

How did you determine the political leaning of news sources?

The political leaning of a source was determined by referencing data from the designation in a number of websites and lists, including but are not limited to:

  • AllSides
  • Media Bias / Fact Check
  • Media Bias Chart
  • Wikipedia's "List of political magazines"
  • the source's previous presidential endorsements
  • share percentages from Facebook users who had self-identified as liberal, conservative or moderate (Bakshy, Eytan; Messing, Solomon; Adamic, Lada, 2015, "Replication Data for: Exposure to Ideologically Diverse News and Opinion on Facebook", doi:10.7910/DVN/LDJ7MS, Harvard Dataverse, V2, UNF:6:5LxloFlZg1/Wqd5XntqsgQ==).