Accuracy And Tone In Media -- May 13, 2023

Locator: 44635MEDIA.  

Accuracy and tone in the media.

Link here.

Near the bottom of that short article is an interactive graph. 

To read the graph:

• the higher on the graph: the more "factual" based on the site's criteria;
• the farther right on the graph, less biased.

Example:

• ABC News: moderate left, "unbiased, well-researched," least opinionated of all media on the chart; 0.85 and 65%
  
• The Atlantic: moderate left, "unbiased, well-researched," l(as "unbiased" as ABC News but among the most opinionated, even more so than The New Yorker
• The New Yorker: left; very opinionated, as noted, and slightly less biased than The Atlantic
• Harvard Business Review: to the left on the chart
• MIT Technology Review: to the right on the chart
• New York Times: moderate left; 0.62 and 70%
• Axios: moderate left; 0.79 and 68% 
• Breitbart, Fox News: right; 0.66 and 55% (almost identical to CNN, left)
  

The interactive graph:

Sources closer to the top of the graph score higher in terms of their average Factual Grade. For example, those sites were more likely to use extensive evidence, be written in a neutral tone, and come from authors with topical expertise.

Part of our study also involved mapping out how each source scored in terms of our metric Writing Tone. This is a measure of how opinionated or neutral the language is. In this case, sources with scores closer to 1 (the right side of the graph) were more likely to use unbiased, neutral language in their reporting. Conversely, articles closer to 0 (the left side of the graph) were more likely to be opinionated.

How they determined the dot placement: 

To identify which news sources consistently produce the very best articles, The Factual used its news-rating algorithm to compare the publication output of 240 major sources. The Factual scores individual articles based on four metrics: writing tone, cited evidence, author expertise, and publication history. When combined, these metrics produce a score from 0 to 100 that we call a Factual Grade. Essentially, an article that is well researched, minimally opinionated, written by a topical expert, and from a reputable source will score highly.

Next, we analyzed ~1,000 articles for each source. These samples are enough to create a reliable estimation of each site’s typical article output. When mapped out spatially, this data produces an interactive picture of the entire English-language news ecosystem.