Sources

Notes on sources of information to Persagen

The following content details primary sources of information to Persagen.com { accepted | accepted with warnings | excluded }.

Critical News Literacy

Additional Reading: Critical News Literacy

• [Fortune.com, 2023-02-15] Trust in media is so low that half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them.  |  discussion: Hacker News: 2023-02-16

Half of Americans in a recent survey indicated they believe national news organizations intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting. The survey - released Wednesday (2023-02-15) by Gallup, Inc., and the Knight Foundation - goes beyond others that have shown a low level of trust in the media to the startling point where many believe there is an intent to deceive.

Asked whether they agreed with the statement that national news organizations do not intend to mislead, 50% of survey respondents said they disagreed. Only 25% agreed, the study found. Similarly, 52% of survey respondents disagreed with a statement that disseminators of national news "care about the best interests of their readers, viewers and listeners," the study found. It said 23% of respondents believed the journalists were acting in the public's best interests.

"That was pretty striking for us," said Sarah Fioroni, a consultant for Gallup. The findings showed a depth of distrust and bad feeling that go beyond the foundations and processes of journalism, Sarah Fioroni said. Journalists need to go beyond emphasizing transparency and accuracy to show the impact of their reporting on the public, the study said. "Americans don't seem to think that the national news organizations care about the overall impact of their reporting on the society," said John Sands, the Knight Foundation's senior director for media and democracy.

In one small consolation, in both cases Americans had more trust in local news.

The ability of many people to instantly learn news from a device they hold in their hand, the rapid pace of the news cycle and an increased number of news sources would indicate that more Americans are on top of the news than ever before. Instead, an information overload appears to have had the opposite effect. The survey said 61% of Americans believe these factors make it harder to stay informed, while 37% said it's easier.

[ ... snip ... ]

• [ProjectCensored.org, 2022-08-19] The Alex Jones Playbook.  Jones and Legacy News Media Hate Each Other, but They Often Use the Same Playbook.

Preface

This "sources" list is comprehensive, but not authoritative: some source inclusions / exclusions are not listed. It is mostly a compendium of information (i.e. a quick reference).

In rare instances (e.g. when a trusted author posts to a questionable site), their source material may be used. In those cases, an explanatory comment is usually attached.

Nevertheless, in all instances the suitability of the source material (trust, accuracy, truth, ...) is carefully considered prior to curating / excluding that content.

Editorial practices at Persagen.com

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Standard practices

Abbreviations

Character encoding

Dates

• "... at the meeting Thursday, the council ..." would be edited to read
  "... at the meeting Thursday (2023-04-27), the council ..."

• ... at the meeting last week, the council ..." would be edited to read
  "... at the meeting last week (2023-04), the council ..."

• "... anti-transgender legislation has surged this year, versus last year." would be edited to read
  "... anti-transgender legislation has surged this year (2024), versus last year (2023).".

• "... since then, anti-transgender legislation has surged ..." would be edited to read
  "... since then (2023 ?), anti-transgender legislation has surged ...".

Grammar

Other practices

• "Matt Walsh, who has supported the racist great replacement theory, wrote ... " might be edited to read
  "Matt Walsh, who has supported the racist great replacement theory  [Wikipedia: Great Replacement], wrote ... ".

Named entities and coreference resolution

• "Victoria Stuart lives in Vancouver. She used to live in Halifax. In 2008, Victoria returned from North Carolina to her current home." would be edited to read

  "Victoria Stuart lives in Vancouver. Victoria Stuart used to live in Halifax. In 2008, Victoria Stuart returned from North Carolina to her current home (Vancouver)."

• [Here is a more involved example, in which all named entities (note particularly proper names: Leonard Leo; Grazie Pozo Christie; ...) are explicitly provided.]

  "... Leonard Leo - a far right lawyer, and the architect of the conservative U.S. Supreme Court takeover - has personally advised Ron DeSantis on his Florida state court selections. A key cog in Leonard Leo's apparatus, the "Judicial Crisis Network" (JCN; now the Concord Fund), contributed $500,000 directly to Ron DeSantis' 2022 gubernatorial campaign and another $250,000 to a group that attacked his opponent in the race. Ron DeSantis' biggest donor for that election was also the Republican Governors Association, a 527 nonprofit group which also took in $2.5 million from Judicial Crisis Network, and contributed an immense sum of over $17 million to Ron DeSantis' campaign from 2021-2022. Chris Jankowski - the CEO of a new pro-Ron DeSantis super PAC "Never Back Down" - is also listed as the settlor of Marble Freedom Trust, a massive trust helmed by Leonard Leo which received a $1.6 billion donation from Barre Seid in 2021.

  "Grazie Pozo Christie has been on the board of The Catholic Association (TCA), a 501(c)(4) religious right group whose stated mission is to activate Catholics in the public sphere, since as far back as 2013. Grazie Pozo Christie has been listed as a director on the tax filings of TCA and its 501(c)(3) arm - The Catholic Association Foundation (TCAF) - since 2018. Between 2019 and 2021, Grazie Pozo Christie received a total of over $205,000 from TCAF, while working just five hours per week as the group's director, secretary and treasurer. TCA has funded efforts to deny the right to marry for same-sex couples.

  "Alongside a flotilla of other Leonard Leo groups, TCAF has also filed amicus briefs in U.S. Supreme Court cases, such as the Dobbs v. Jackson case that overturned Roe (for which Grazie Pozo Christie co-authored the group's brief); a case arguing against employee access to contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act; and a case arguing that religious-tied social service organizations should be allowed to violate nondiscrimination laws. The Catholic Association (TCA) / The Catholic Association Foundation (TCAF) are core groups in Leonard Leo's dark money network. Leonard Leo sat on the board of TCA in 2012 and for TCAF in 2012 and 2013.

  "Both groups also have deep ties to Neil Corkery, a key Leonard Leo ally who has held the books for many groups in Leonard Leo's network. Neil Corkery was president of the board at TCAF until 2014 and treasurer of TCA until 2014. While no longer on the board of either group, Neil Corkery has been listed as keeping the books for TCAF in its most recent 990 form. Another longtime Leonard Leo ally, Daniel Casey - who helped launch Judicial Crisis Network, held various leadership roles in the TCA/TCAF from 2012 to 2019. TCAF has also paid nearly $1 million to Leonard Leo's for-profit business - CRC Advisors, where Neil Corkery is also CFO - between 2016 and 2020. In 2018 and 2019, TCAF paid an additional $240,000 to Leonard Leo personally for consulting.

  "Since 2016, Leonard Leo's known assets have skyrocketed as funding for the groups he is tied to has also dramatically increased, since Leonard Leo became "volunteer" to Donald Trump on judicial nominations. Leonard Leo's nonprofit groups have routinely paid large sums to Leonard Leo's CRC, as reported by Heidi Przybyla at Politico. Following this bombshell, the watchdog group Campaign for Accountability called for an IRS investigation into seven of Leonard Leo's groups which have paid over $73 million to his for-profit firms from 2016-2021.

  "Grazie Pozo Christie is also an "associate scholar" for the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) - the 501(c)(3) arm of its better-known 501(c)(4) sister organization, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA) - which is devoted to destroying Roe and legal access to abortion care in the U.S. ..."

  [Source: (Truthout.org, 2023-04-24, DeSantis' Board of Education Nominees Are Steeped in Far Right Dark Money. The dark-money funded extremists appointed to the board by Ron DeSantis will wield power over Florida's K-12 schools.]

Spelling

Transliteration

"... - Protégé (non-accented, for searches: Protege) ..."

Visual aids

Lorem ipsum dolor link 1   link2 sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

• External links (which preferentially open in new browser tab) are marked with an external link icon: Vancouver, British Columbia

• Email: info@persagen.com

• I hold a Ph.D. (2000: Biology, University of Victoria - specializing in Molecular Genetics) and I've been self-employed ~2009-06+. For some years I was a scientific consultant (Persagen.com), conducting scientific review in life sciences/genetics and genomic/bioinformatic analyses for clients at U.S. federal research institutes and agencies.

  My more recent work (~2014-present) includes the natural language processing, machine learning and artificial intelligence - summarized to some extent in my curriculum vitae,   cover Letter, and technical Biography.

• [📌 pinned article] [CommonDreams.org, 2023-02-20] New York Times Under Fire for Anti-Trans Coverage.  Attacks on trans rights are often portrayed as coming from the far right. But liberal and centrist institutions like The New York Times aid and abet this campaign.

• ⚠️ CAUTION: potentially questionable content: carefully scrutinize authors and content for bias and truthfulness.

• 🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources, due to ownership by ...

• § : subsection, e.g. Wikipedia: Artificial intelligence: § Bad actors and weaponized AI  |  Editorial practices at Persagen.com § Machine-generated material

Editorial Practices at Persagen.com concerning Wikipedia-sourced material

While Wikipedia is a valuable source of material, the crowdsourced content is subject to adversarial editing - particularly on controversial topics - by factions advocating different points-of-view. For example, note the following items.

Accordingly, material sourced from Wikipedia (and other sources) - replicated on Persagen.com - is subject to the following editorial practices.

• Regarding omissions in Wikipedia content: Troy Lanigan worked at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation for 26 years 7 months - including 10 years as President. Nonetheless, except for one inconsequential reference, as of 2021-11-25 there is no mention of Troy Lanigan on the lengthy Wikipedia entry for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation - nor does Troy Lanigan have a Wikipedia page.

• Rationale: Wikipedia articles are used:

• to provide general background information and knowledge;

• to identify and connect broad areas of knowledge (entities and concepts); and,

• to provide a structural framework for addition of vetted, non-Wikipedia sourced material.

In all cases, Readers should refer to the main Wikipedia article for those references and draw their own conclusions regarding the accuracy and reliability of that content.

Editorial practices at Persagen.com concerning Wikipedia-sourced material: Exemplar

Ostensively defended as protecting the unborn fetus, United States anti-abortion / pro-life movements opportunistically conflate that issue with other issues aligned with Christian Right and socially conservative movements. These include the following, generally meticulously planned and well-coordinated strategies.

• A broadly deployed strategy is the use of anti-transgender wedge issues / wedge attacks - refined by attacks the partition and separate the "T" from the "LGB" - but also broadly amenable to partitioning and attacking the LGBT community as a whole.

• Examples of wedge tactics include attacking the participation of trans women in sports, and the fear-mongering "bathroom predator" myth (meme).

Whenever and wherever anti-abortion activity take hold, erosions of women's rights and anti-LGBT attacks (particularly on the relatively smaller, more stigmatized and vulnerable transgender community) invariably follow.

In that regard, this 2021-11-04 Thomson Reuters Foundation news item, OPINION: LGBT+ rights in Poland are at a tipping point, contains the following paragraph.

"... It's not just suppression of LGBT+ activists that is troubling. So-called 'family charters' ['Marriage is a natural institution to which the mission of reproduction is entrusted.'  - i.e., heterosexual unions] adopted by municipalities seeking to limit marriage to heterosexual couples, the establishment of 'LGBT-free zones' by these same municipalities, attempts to block sex education classes and government moves to limit the sale of contraception, are all characteristics of the current government. ..."

As of 2021-11-04 - despite international condemnation  [local copy] of the nearly absolute abolition of abortion and LGBT rights in Poland - the lengthy Wikipedia entry for Poland does not mention any of the following terms.

The sole mentions of "abortion" or "sexuality" in Wikipedia's article on Poland are in the following paragraph (at the end of the Law subsection).

"Abortion is permitted only in cases of rape, incest or when the woman's life is in danger. Congenital disorder and stillbirth are not covered by the law, forcing some women to seek abortion abroad, and others to seek the assistance of psychiatrists willing to testify on the negative psychological impact of stillbirth. Poland does not criminalize homosexuality, and its legality was confirmed in 1932. The Polish Constitution defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman."

Absence of discussion of anti-abortion and anti-LGBT issues (affecting millions of people directly and indirectly) in Wikipedia's Poland article reflect censorship by omission. Accordingly, while Wikipedia is an important source of information, per Editorial practices at Persagen,  content sourced from Wikipedia is:

1. scrutinized for content, errors, and omissions; and,

2. supplemented with additional content relevant to that content.

As a further example, as of 2021-11-04 neither of the Wikipedia articles Google or Censorship by Google mention former employee Timnit Gebru. In December 2020, Timnit Gebru's employment with Google as technical co-lead of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team ended after higher Google managers asked her to either withdraw an as-yet-unpublished paper, or remove the names of all the Google employees from that paper. That issue received wide coverage in the popular and technical press, yet the aforementioned Wikipedia articles on Google (even the Censorship by Google) fail to mention Timnit Gebru.

Editorial practices at Persagen.com concerning machine-generated material

Synthetic content - easily generated by AI (ML; NLP) - is excluded from sources of information on Persagen.com due to use of generative models (i.e. machine learning / natural language processing) to generate content - leading to multiple issues including misinformation.

Generative models - such as large language models - are trained on vast quantities of text (e.g. all news media; all of Wikipedia; social media; encyclopediae; ...) and images / video (for those applied to computer vision-based applications - e.g. DALL-E). When presented with new inputs, these "pretrained" models probabilistically generate responses based on the preceding word or character - building the response based on the highest probability match from the context within the pretrained model data. The key phrase here is generative model - based on the pretrained model, the output from prompted text is wholly probabilistically determined - void of any understanding of the meaning of the text.

While large language models have been spectacularly successful at generating facsimile documents, stories, technical and scientific papers, computer code, etc., the generated content may or may not be factual.

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• [MIT Technology Review, 2020-08-22] GPT-3, Bloviator: OpenAI's language generator has no idea what it's talking about  Tests show that the popular AI still has a poor grasp of reality.  |  discussion (2020-08-22): reddit.com/r/MachineLearning

• [2021-02-05, hai.Stanford.edu] How Large Language Models Will Transform Science, Society, and AI.  Scholars in computer science, linguistics, and philosophy explore the pains and promises of GPT-3.  |  local copy

• [arXiv.org, 2023-01-23] AI model GPT-3 (dis)informs us better than humans.  ... Our results show that GPT-3 is a double-edge sword, which, in comparison with humans, can produce accurate information that is easier to understand, but can also produce more compelling disinformation. ...

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The probabilistic (generative; hallucinative; hegemonic) of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT,   GPT-3, and GPT-4 are problematic insofar as the data these models are trained on include misinformation, disinformation, and other biases. While these LLMs can be prompted (prompt engineering) to provide more factual information, the same approach can be used to tailor generated content to specific purposes (e.g. right-wing populist rhetoric). However, an encouraging trend is the use of augmented LLMs - particularly those (e.g. Meta's   Toolformer) which can use APIs to independently search, retrieve, and edit LLM responses. Finally - to date (2023-04-29) - LLM largely remain black box models - with little factual or theoretical knowledge of how they work, and less so any emergent properties they might possess.

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• [arXiv.com, 2023-04-28] Are Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models a Mirage?

• [AssemblyAI.com, 2023-03-07] Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models. Emergence can be defined as the sudden appearance of novel behavior. Large Language Models apparently display emergence by suddenly gaining new abilities as they grow. Why does this happen, and what does this mean?

• [arXiv.org, 2022-06-15] Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models.

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Furthermore, large language and deepfake models may be weaponized.

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• Wikipedia, Artificial intelligence: § Bad actors and weaponized AI, 2023-01-24:

Artificial intelligence (AI) provides a number of tools that are particularly useful for authoritarian governments:

• smart spyware,   face recognition, and voice recognition allow widespread surveillance; such surveillance allows machine learning to classify potential enemies of the state and can prevent them from hiding;

• recommendation systems can precisely target propaganda and misinformation for maximum effect;

• deepfakes aid in producing misinformation; and,

• advanced AI can make centralized decision making more competitive with liberal and decentralized systems such as markets.

Terrorists, criminals, and rogue states may use other forms of weaponized AI - such as advanced digital warfare, and lethal autonomous weapons. By 2015, over fifty countries were reported to be researching battlefield robots.

Machine-learning (a subset of AI) is also able to design tens of thousands of toxic molecules in a matter of hours.

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Synthetic data - which looks real and is authoritatively presented - has the potential to cause irreparable societal harm (algorithmic bias  |  culture wars  |  filter bubbles  |  identity politics). This is particularly concerning given the ease of online access to large language models such as ChatGPT  [§ Features and limitations], and their use by activists in the political domain - analogous to how Citizens United v. FEC unleashed the scourge of dark money exacerbating political corruption of American politics and legislation.

Consequently, sources known to rely on generative models are excluded as sources of data on Persagen.com.

• A current (2023-01-24) exemplar is CNET  - which is excluded as a source of information on Persagen.com, due to these concerns.

Recent media discussion on machine-generated content

A YouTuber named Yannic Kilcher has sparked controversy in the AI world after training a bot on posts collected from 4chan's Politically Incorrect board (otherwise known as /pol/). The board is 4chan's most popular and well-known for its toxicity (even in the anything-goes environment of 4chan). Posters share racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic messages, which the bot - named GPT-4chan after the popular series of GPT language models  [GPT-3] made by research lab OpenAI - learned to imitate. After training his model, Yannic Kilcher released it back onto 4chan as multiple bots, which posted tens of thousands of times on /pol/. "The GPT-4chan model was good, in a terrible sense," says Yannic Kilcher in a video on YouTube describing the project. "It perfectly encapsulated the mix of offensiveness, nihilism, trolling, and deep distrust of any information whatsoever that permeates most posts on /pol/." ...

What would happen if such legal-but-sneaky strategies for tilting the rules in favor of one group over another become more widespread and effective? We can see hints of an answer in the remarkable pace at which artificial-intelligence tools for everything from writing to graphic design are being developed and improved. And the unavoidable conclusion is that AI will make lobbying more guileful, and perhaps more successful.

It turns out there is a natural opening for this technology: microlegislation. "Microlegislation" is a term for small pieces of proposed law that cater - sometimes unexpectedly - to narrow interests. Political scientist Amy McKay coined the term. Amy McKay studied the 564 amendments to the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") considered by the Senate Finance Committee in 2009, as well as the positions of 866 lobbying groups and their campaign contributions. She documented instances where lobbyist comments - on health-care research, vaccine services, and other provisions - were translated directly into microlegislation in the form of amendments. And she found that those groups' financial contributions to specific senators on the committee increased the amendments' chances of passing. Her finding that lobbying works was no surprise. More important, McKay's work demonstrated that computer models can predict the likely fate of proposed legislative amendments, as well as the paths by which lobbyists can most effectively secure their desired outcomes. And that turns out to be a critical piece of creating an AI lobbyist. ...

... The experimental results show that:

• False information will spread and contaminate related memories in LLMs via a semantic diffusion process, i.e., false information has global detrimental effects beyond its direct impact.

• Current LLMs are susceptible to authority bias, i.e., LLMs are more likely to follow false information presented in trustworthy styles such as news reports and research papers, which usually cause deeper and wider pollution of information.

• Current LLMs are more sensitive to false information through in-context injection than through learning-based injection, which severely challenges the reliability and safety of LLMs even when all training data are trusty and correct.

The above findings raise the need for new false information defense algorithms to address the global impact of false information, and new alignment algorithms to unbiasedly lead LLMs to follow essential human values rather than superficial patterns.

Editorial practices at Persagen.com concerning social media  [Google; Meta (Facebook); Reddit; ...]

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources.  Social media platforms such as Google, Meta (Facebook), Twitter, Reddit, ... are excluded as primary sources of information.

Abstract

Online media is important for society in informing and shaping opinions, hence raising the question of what drives online news consumption. Here we analyse the causal effect of negative and emotional words on news consumption using a large online dataset of viral news stories. Specifically, we conducted our analyses using a series of randomized controlled trials (N = 22,743). Our dataset comprises ~105,000 different variations of news stories from Upworthy.com that generated ∼5.7 million clicks across more than 370 million overall impressions.

Although positive words were slightly more prevalent than negative words, we found that negative words in news headlines increased consumption rates (and positive words decreased consumption rates). For a headline of average length, each additional negative word increased the click-through rate by 2.3%. Our results contribute to a better understanding of why users engage with online media.

[ ... snip ... ]

Discussion

[ ... snip ... ]

Understanding the biases that influence people's consumption of online content is critical, especially as misinformation, fake news and conspiracy theories proliferate online. Even publishers marketed as "good news websites" are benefiting from negativity, demonstrating the need for a nuanced understanding of news consumption. Knowing what features of news make articles interesting to people is a necessary first step for this purpose and will enable us to increase online literacy and to develop transparent online news practices.

Although former President Donald Trump will remain banned from posting on Facebook, the platform will no longer fact-check any of his public statements if they are shared to the site by other users, according to an internal Facebook memo obtained by CNN.

The decision to stop fact-checking Donald Trump's commentaries - including those that are blatantly false, such as Donald Trump's continued insistence that widespread election fraud affected the outcome of the 2020 United States presidential election - comes in light of Trump's announcement that he will be running for president in 2024. Facebook's policies state that politicians (defined as current officeholders or candidates for political office) are exempt from the Facebook's fact-checking policy.

Facebook has not yet lifted it's indefinite suspension of Donald Trump, which was implemented almost two years ago [Social media use by Donald Trump: Facebook and Instagram bans, 2021-01-06] after the former president Donald Trump's lies and incendiary rhetoric resulted in the attack on the U.S. Capitol building on 2021-01-06 [January 6 United States Capitol attack].

"The shocking events of the last 24 hours (2022-11-17) clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg  [Mark Zuckerberg] said in a post the day after the 2021-01-06 attack.

[ ... snip ... ]

Fact Checking Resources

Comment on Independence of Fact-Checking Websites (Persagen.com)

Regarding sources of information for Persagen.com, this file annotates web sites that are regularly encountered by Persagen or other users. All sources need to be carefully and continually scrutinized for accuracy and bias. Informational sources requiring additional inspection are flagged as follows.

Suggestions for assessing ⚠️ yellow-flagged sites include examining the author(s), author affiliations, explicit and implicit biases, etc.

Note: due to it's breadth of coverage, depth of analyses, and categorization of bias and ranking of credibility I rely extensively on Media Bias/Fact Check as a first line of analysis regarding suitability of informational sources for inclusion on Persagen.com. HOWEVER, even Media Bias/Fact Check is biased; accordingly, their reviews and conclusions must be studied, analytically. As an example, as of 2021-10-30 Media Bias/Fact Check assigned a "HIGH CREDIBILITY' rating to National Review, despite stated failed fact checks and sourcing of information from known disinformation sources. Hence, I ⚠️ -flag Media Bias/Fact Check, for increased scrutiny of it's content, analyses, and ratings.

Challenges to sourcing and distributing newsworthy information include attacks on journalists / journalism, the decline of local journalism, monopolization of news domains, misinformation and disinformation, and disproportionate influence of extreme wealth.

Regarding the influence of wealth, wealthy corporations and billionaires - in addition to owing major news sources such as Bloomberg News (Michael Bloomberg) and The Washington Post (Jeff Bezos) - fund charitable organizations such as the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation,   the MacArthur Foundation,   The Ford Foundation,  the Carnegie Corporation, the Atlantic Philanthropies, and the Foundation to Promote Open Society  [billionaire George Soros' Open Society Foundations, ...

In the worst cases, Machiavellian billionaires such as Charles Koch have funded otherwise reputable fact-checking sites such as Poynter Institute - which despite claims of independence must be closely scrutinized for neoliberal biases that benefit the Koch plutocracy. The Poynter Institute has also received funding left-wing billionaire George Soros. Of note regarding this discussion, the Poynter Institute also established the highly-regarded and used International Fact-Checking Network  (IFCN).

As a further example, the fact-checking The Trust Project from highly influential and questionable entities Google,   the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund, the Markkula Foundation, and Facebook. The Markkula Foundation is a nebulous entity lacking a Wikipedia entry - which given its influence, is a "yellow flag." Likewise eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's Wikipedia page does not mention the Democracy Fund - a charitable foundation created by Pierre Omidyar which partially funds The Trust Project. Although not without some controversies, the highly-regarded and influential investigative journalism site The Intercept is partially funded by Pierre Omidyar's media company, , a non-profit media organization focused on entertainment studios, consumer businesses, and journalism. Omidyar initially committed $250 million and continues to support it through First Look Media.

We now live in a post-truth society - fueled by misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories propagated on mass media sites such as Fox News and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. With recent advances in artificial intelligence including machine learning and natural language processing, hyper-realistic fake content is easily and abundantly generated by specialists and novices alike. Neural networks can effortlessly generate deepfake videos, while deep contextualized language models such as BERT,   GPT-3, and other natural language processing language models. Furthermore, even well-engineered neural networks are prone to algorithmic bias. Recognizing, appreciating and understanding those phenomena requires expert knowledge of the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence and mass media domains.

Ultimately - even given fact-checking services (such as IFCN and curated informational sources such as Persagen.com - you must ultimately use your experience and common sense to partition fact from fiction, and truth from non-truth. While there is no perfect solution, recommendations  [local copy, 2021-10-21] from the Library at the University of California - Merced) provide a reasonable approach.

General Recommendations

Ballotpedia.org

FactCheck.org

History

Factcheck.org is a nonprofit website that describes itself as a non-partisan "consumer advocate for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics." It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Factcheck.org has won four Webby Awards in the Politics category in 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2012.

Funded by / Ownership

The Annenberg Foundation owns and funds Factcheck.org. The Annenberg Foundation receives grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Analysis / Bias

Factcheck.org provides well-sourced unbiased fact-checking. Quite simply, Factcheck.org can be trusted to provide accurate fact checks with minimal bias. Factcheck.org is used by Media Bias Fact Check as a resource to check claims when reviewing sources. They are on our Top 10 Fact Checker list.

Failed Fact Checks

None. They are an IFCN Fact Checker.

ICANN

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces and numerical spaces of the internet, ensuring the network's stable and secure operation. ICANN performs the actual technical maintenance work of the Central Internet Address pools and DNS root zone registries pursuant to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) function contract. The contract regarding the IANA stewardship functions between ICANN and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the United States Department of Commerce ended on October 1, 2016, formally transitioning the functions to the global multistakeholder community. ...

List of Fact-Checking Websites (Wikipedia)

Media Bias/Fact Check

⚠️ CAUTION: potentially questionable content; carefully scrutinize authors and content for bias and truthfulness.

Media Bias/Fact Check (stylized Media Bias/Fact Check)  |  MBFC  |  MediaBiasFactCheck.com

Comment. Due to it's breadth of coverage, depth of analyses, and categorization of bias and ranking of credibility I rely extensively on Media Bias/Fact Check as a first line of analysis regarding suitability of informational sources for inclusion on Persagen.com. HOWEVER, even Media Bias/Fact Check is biased; accordingly, their reviews and conclusions must be studied, analytically. As an example, as of 2021-10-30 Media Bias/Fact Check assigned a "HIGH CREDIBILITY' rating to National Review, despite stated failed fact checks and sourcing of information from known disinformation sources. Hence, I ⚠️ -flag Media Bias/Fact Check, for increased scrutiny of it's content, analyses, and ratings.

Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) is an American website founded in 2015 by editor Dave Van Zandt. Sites are rated on a 0-10 scale by Van Zandt and his team using categories such as biased wording and headlines, factuality and sourcing, and story choices. The Poynter Institute notes, "Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific." The Columbia Journalism Review describes Media Bias/Fact Check as an amateur attempt at categorizing media bias and Van Zandt as an "armchair media analyst". The site has been used by researchers at the University of Michigan to create a tool called the "Iffy Quotient", which draws data from Media Bias/Fact Check and NewsWhip to track the prevalence of "fake news" and questionable sources on social media.

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Disambiguation: Media Bias/Fact Check's Dave M. Van Zandt

• Autobiography: MediaBiasFactCheck.com/about/

"Dave Van Zandt is a registered Non-Affiliated voter who values evidence-based reporting. Since High School (a long time ago), Dave has been interested in politics and noticed as a kid the same newspaper report in two different papers was very different in their tone. This curiosity led him to pursue a Communications Degree in college; however, like most 20-year olds he didn’t know what he wanted and changed to a Physiology major midstream. Dave has worked in the healthcare industry since graduating from college but never lost the desire to learn more about bias and its impacts.

"The combination of being fascinated by politics, a keen eye to spot bias before he even knew what it was called, and an education/career in science gave Dave the tools required for understanding Media Bias and its implications. This led to a 20-year journey where Dave would read anything and everything he could find on media bias and linguistics. He also employed the scientific method in the development of a methodology to support his assessments.

"After years of people telling him to launch a website, in late 2015, Mediabiasfactcheck.com was born from a combination of many different experiences and exhaustive research. For the last 5+ years, Dave and his team have refined their methods and improved their reviews to the point where the website receives consistent high traffic levels and is considered a top authority in rating media bias and credibility."

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• Frequently Asked Questions:  Who in the heck is Dave Van Zandt?

"Dave M. Van Zandt obtained a Communications Degree before pursuing a higher degree in the sciences. Dave currently works full time in the health care industry. Dave has spent more than 20 years as an arm chair researcher on media bias and its role in political influence. For the record, he [David M. Van Zandt  |  Media Bias/Fact Check ] also is not the President of The New School, that is a different David E. Van Zandt who is the head of a liberal college in New York City. I am an unaffiliated voter from North Carolina."

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• As a critical (hence judgemental) fact-checking website, Media Bias/Fact Check has attackers that unfairly try to discredit  Media Bias/Fact Check. For example, the opaque Hucksters.net website - flying the banner "Exposing fraud, corruption, and censorship" - nonetheless claims that Media Bias/Fact Check's Dave M. Van Zandt is David E. Van Zandt - the latter a former president of The New School, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Here is the Hucksters.net webpage [local copy, 2021-10-21].

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• Dave M. Van Zandt is likely David Minard Van Zandt (b. 1969-01; residing in Greensboro, NC), which appears to be corroborated (1) at MyLife.com - which lists him as "owner at Van Zandt Webs (self-employed), and (2) RationalWiki.org  [local copy, 2021-10-21], which provides much additional information.

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NewsGuard

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources over concerns of funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation  (which holds disproportionate wealth and influence), associations of co-founder Gordon Crovitz with The Wall Street Journal (owned by the disreputable ownership by Rupert Murdoch), revenue sourced from advertisers, other concerns.

History

Founded in 2018, NewsGuard is a browser extension that displays the credibility and transparency of media sources. Steven Brill and Louis "L." Gordon Crovitz are the Co-Founders. Brill founded The American Lawyer, Court TV, and the Yale Journalism Initiative. L. Gordon Crovitz was the publisher and columnist of The Wall Street Journal.

Funded by / Ownership

NewsGuard is a for-profit company that began with $6 million dollars of seed funding. Investors include the two co-founders, as well as notable groups such as the Knight Foundation and Cox Investment Holdings. A full list of the seed donors can be found here.  NewsGuard generates revenue through licensing of its ratings to advertisers, who use these ratings when determining what sites are safe to place their advertising. They have also formed a partnership with Microsoft Corporation by having their extension built into the Microsoft Edge.  NewsGuard is currently seeking more partnerships and licensing agreements.

Analysis / Bias

NewsGuard reviews and rates media and information sources using a 100 point scale. Each source is rated on 9 different criteria and with each criterion having a different weight that totals 100 for a perfect score. Any source that scores a 60 or above will be given a green shield and those below 60 will receive a red shield. NewsGuard also provides, what it calls a "Nutrition Label", to explain how they came to their conclusions. The nutrition label is well-sourced and provides examples to support their claims.

In review, NewsGuard reviews media websites and rates them according to the criteria listed above. The information provided on their nutrition labels is thorough and sourced properly. They also do not use loaded words and maintain a neutral tone in their reviews. We found that there are many sources given a green shield rating, that we rate Mixed for factual reporting. This simply indicates that they have a different standard in their ratings. Perhaps a yellow shield would be appropriate for sources that are transparent, but occasionally publish misleading information, or as we rate them "Factually Mixed." NewsGuard does not factor bias into their ratings, though they will mention it on their nutrition label. The primary focus of the ratings is on transparency and lack of deception, such as labeling advertising and separating opinion from news pieces.

NewsGuard has faced both criticism and praise. The number one criticism of NewsGuard, is that some sites that many perceive as being untrustworthy, were given a green shield and some sources that people find trustworthy were given a red shield (Al Jazeera).  NewsGuard has been criticized by Breitbart News  [notorious disinformation source; note also past associations with Steve Bannon] as "the establishment media's latest effort to blacklist alternative media sites" NewsGuard denies this claim.

In general, NewsGuard provides evidence-based information that is well-sourced and adheres to established criteria.

OpenSecrets.org

PolitiFact.com

RationalWiki

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources; RationalWiki is a combative (trolling) wiki-styled website presenting highly-biased points of view that - despite being ideologically opposed to conspiratorial / alternative medicine / fundamentalist Christian / ... content favored at self-described American conservative and fundamentalist ChristianConservapedia - diminishes readers' confidence in RationalWiki content.  [Comment: As a general recommendation, it is probably best to avoid highly-biased, combative sources of information.]

Our purpose here at RationalWiki includes:

• Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement;

• Documenting the full range of crank ideas;

• Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism;

• Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media.

RationalWiki is a wiki whose stated goals are to "analyze and refute pseudoscience and the anti-science movement, document "crank" ideas, explore conspiracy theories,   authoritarianism, and fundamentalism, and analyze how these subjects are handled in the media." RationalWiki was created in 2007 as a counterpoint to Conservapedia after an incident in which contributors attempting to edit Conservapedia were banned.

History

Origin

In April 2007, Peter Lipson, a doctor of internal medicine, attempted to edit Conservapedia's article on breast cancer to include evidence against Conservapedia's claim that abortion was linked to the disease. Conservapedia is an encyclopedia established by Andy Schlafly  [son of notorious conservative activist and lawyer Phyllis Stewart Schlafly] as an alternative to Wikipedia, which Andy Schlafly perceived as suffering from a liberal and atheist   bias. Andy Schlafly and Conservapedia administrators "questioned Peter Lipson's credentials and shut down debate". After they were blocked, "Lipson and several other contributors quit trying to moderate the articles [on Conservapedia] and instead started their own website, RationalWiki."

RationalMedia Foundation

Prior to 2010, RationalWiki's domains were registered to Trent Toulouse, and the wiki was hosted from a server located in his home. In 2010, Trent Toulouse incorporated a nonprofit organization, the RationalWiki Foundation Inc., to manage the affairs and pay the operational expenses of the website. In July 2013, the RationalWiki Foundation changed its name to the RationalMedia Foundation, stating that its aims extended beyond the RationalWiki site alone.

Content

RationalWiki differs in several ways from the philosophy of Wikipedia and some other informational wikis. It is written from a self-described "snarky point of view" and "scientific point of view" rather than a "neutral point of view," and publishes opinion, speculation, and original research.] Many RationalWiki articles mockingly describe beliefs that RationalWiki opposes, especially when covering topics such as alternative medicine or fundamentalist Christians.

A significant fraction of activity on RationalWiki used to be critiquing and "monitoring Conservapedia". RationalWiki contributors, many of whom are former Conservapedia contributors, are often highly critical of Conservapedia, and according to an article published in the Los Angeles Times in 2007, RationalWiki members "by their own admission" vandalize Conservapedia. Lester Haines of The Register stated: "Its entry entitled 'Conservapedia:Delusions' promptly mocks the claims that 'Homosexuality is a mental disorder', 'Atheists are sociopaths', and 'During the 6 days of creation G-d placed the Earth inside a black hole to slow down time so the light from distant stars had time to reach us'."

Both Hao Yan et. al 2019 and Markus Knoche et al., two articles about classifying a writer's biases via text analysis, asserted that Conservapedia was "conservative" and RationalWiki was "liberal

.

[ ... snip ... ]

History

Founded in April 2007 by Peter Lipson, a doctor of internal medicine, RationalWiki analyzes and refutes pseudoscience and the anti-science movement, documenting the full range of crank ideas, explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism, analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media.

From a historical perspective, RationalWiki was created as a response to Conservapedia, which is routinely critical of liberals and atheists. MBFC lists Conservapedia as a Questionable source based on the publication of right-wing Christian Propaganda, as well as false reports.

Funded by / Ownership

RationalWiki is owned by the RationalMedia Foundation and is funded through donations.

Analysis / Bias

In review, RationalWiki is a wiki site that is open source and editable by anyone. RationalWiki is different from Wikipedia in that they openly use loaded language to describe conservatives and those who promote conspiracies and pseudoscience. In general, RationalWiki does not attempt to hide their bias as they routinely poke fun at conservatives. This has led to them being labeled leftists. Perhaps RationalWiki leans left, but in the end, they are a pro-Science source. In general, all information is sourced to credible sources of evidence, much like Wikipedia.

A factual search reveals RationalWiki has not failed a fact check.

Snopes.com

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources due to past issues of plagiarism by Snopes owner David Mikkelson and other senior management issues, associations with Facebook, ...

History

Founded in 1994 by Barbara Mikkelson and David Mikkelson,  Snopes.com, also known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, was one of the first online fact-checking websites. It is a resource for validating and debunking such stories in American popular culture. Snopes ownership has said that the site receives more complaints of liberal bias than conservative bias but insists that the same debunking standards are applied to all political claims and urban legends.

On 8/13/2021, a BuzzFeed investigation revealed that co-founder David Mikkelson plagiarized over 50 news stories between 2015 and 2019.

Plagiarism by Snopes Co-founder David Mikkelson

On 2021-08-13, BuzzFeed News published an investigation by reporter Dean Sterling Jones that showed David Mikkelson had used plagiarized material from different news sources in 54 articles between 2015 and 2019 in an effort to increase website traffic. Mikkelson also published plagiarized material under a pseudonym, "Jeff Zarronandia". The BuzzFeed inquiry prompted Snopes to launch an internal review of Mikkelson's articles and retracted 60 of them the day the Buzzfeed story appeared. Mikkelson admitted to committing "multiple serious copyright violations" and apologized for "serious lapses in judgment." He was suspended from editorial duties during the investigation, but remains an officer and stakeholder in the company. [Source; Wikipedia: Snopes: Plagiarism by co-founder David Mikkelson, 2021-10-22.]

Funded by / Ownership

According to their about page, Snopes.com is an independent publication owned by Snopes Media Group. They derive funding from online advertising as well as donations. They fully disclose funding and expenses, as well as listing any donation over $10,000. For example, they list that Facebook paid them $100,000, and the James Randi Educational Foundation awarded them $75,000 in the past. In 2020, they received a donation of $10,030 from Wei-Hwa Huang and Trisha Brooke Huang. Snopes offers full transparency with funding.

Analysis

In 2012, FactCheck.org reviewed a sample of Snopes' responses to political rumors regarding George W. Bush,   Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama and found them free from bias in all cases. Critics of the site have made the false claim  [Comment: note: The New York Times article] that the website is funded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros, which has been debunked many times as they are funded through advertising and donations, which they disclose.

Snopes was previously  a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) that the Poynter Institute runs. Snopes was independently verified by the IFCN, which lists its core principles as: "non-partisanship and fairness, transparency of sources, transparency of funding and organization, transparency of methodology, and open and honest corrections policy." They met these criteria, along with 80+ other fact-checkers worldwide. However, in 2019 they left the IFCN.

Further, Snopes always openly source their information and avoid emotional wording, though they occasionally publish news stories that offer some opinions. Snopes is frequently accused of liberal bias by some on the right. For example, the Daily Express of the U.K. [see Daily Mail entry] and the Daily Caller  [Daily Caller] have criticized them for fact checks they felt were wrong or biased against the right.

Bias

According to research performed by Real Clear Politics in the article: "Snopes and Editorializing Fact Checks," they determined that out of the six fact-checkers working with Facebook, "that Snopes is the least likely to fact-check matters of opinion." This is important because opinion is something that cannot be fact-checked. The article went on to say, "We have found that since we started our project, Snopes has fact-checked opinions only 2 percent of the time. In other words, 98 percent of the time, it sticks to matters of verifiable fact. Such an achievement is even more remarkable given that during this period, they produced the second-most articles of the six fact-checking outfits."

In 2021, Snopes' fact-checks remain properly sourced and factual. We have also found a reasonable balance between fact checks on the right and left as a new Democratic administration makes statements subject to fact-checking.

Finally, the Snopes website also features news reports from other sources such as The Associated Press. From an editorial perspective, the news stories they choose to publish are slightly more favorable to the left, such as this: "Founders: Removal from office is not the only purpose of impeachment." This story is republished from The Conversation. Original reporting such as this: "Is Trump Withdrawing Deportation Protections for Families of Active Troops?" is low biased, factual, and properly sourced to left-leaning sources such as NPR and The New York Times, as well as government sources. In general, Snopes' original reporting and news curation hold a left-of-center bias.

Failed Fact Checks

Snopes.com is a Fact-Checker.

Trust Project, The

The Trust Project is a complex international consortium involving approximately 120 news organizations working towards greater transparency and accountability in the global news industry, including The Economist,   The Globe and Mail, the Independent Journal Review,   Mic  [failed fact checks], Italy's La Repubblica,  Il Sole 24 ORE, and La Stampa.

The Trust Project was started in 2014 by Sally Lehrman, a journalist and former director of Santa Clara University's  journalism ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and launched in November 2017. Richard Gingras, head of Google News is a co-founder. The Project is funded by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark's Philanthropic Fund, Google, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund, the Markkula Foundation, and Facebook.  [Source: Wikipedia, 2021-10-21.]

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Sally Lehrman (Chief Executive, The Trust Project )

Sally Lehrman  [local copy, 2021-10-21], an award-winning journalist, founded and leads The Trust Project, an international collaboration that she began building in 2014 to strengthen public confidence in the news through accountability and transparency. The consortium, which involves about 100 news organizations, has created a set of digital standards called "Trust Indicators" that help the public and news distribution platforms easily identify reliable news sites. Lehrman provides vision and strategy, guiding the effort as it implements the news industry's first-ever transparency standards for users to see and machines to read, also overseeing collaborative implementation and scaling among newsrooms around the world. Sally Lehrman was named one of MediaShift's Top 20 Digital Innovators in 2018 for this work.

Major news distribution platforms including Google,   Facebook and Bing  [Microsoft Bing] are external partners to the effort and use the Trust Indicators in various ways, such as in search results, news feeds and display on user screens.

Sally Lehrman is an award-winning reporter on medicine, biotechnology and science policy. Her honors include a Peabody Award, Peabody/Robert Wood Johnson Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Programming, and Columbia/Du Pont Silver Baton (The DNA Files); the SPJ Wells Key (the Society of Professional Journalists' highest honor); various other reporting and writing awards; and the John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. Byline credits include Scientific American,  Nature,  Health,   The Atlantic,  Natural Medicine,   The Boston Globe,   The New York Times,   Salon.com, and The DNA Files, distributed by NPR.

[ ... snip ... ]

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News aggregators

In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, podcasts, and video blogs (vlogs) in one location for easy viewing. The updates distributed may include journal tables of contents, podcasts, videos, and news items.

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• [arXiv.org, 2023-01-26] Evolution of Filter Bubbles and Polarization in News Recommendation.

Recent work in news recommendation has demonstrated that recommenders can over-expose users to articles that support their pre-existing opinions. However, most existing work focuses on a static setting or over a short-time window, leaving open questions about the long-term and dynamic impacts of news recommendations.

In this paper, we explore these dynamic impacts through a systematic study of three research questions:
(1) How do the news reading behaviors of users change after repeated long-term interactions with recommenders?
(2) How do the inherent preferences of users change over time in such a dynamic recommender system?
(3) Can the existing SOTA static method alleviate the problem in the dynamic environment?
Concretely, we conduct a comprehensive data-driven study through simulation experiments of political polarization in news recommendations based on 40,000 annotated news articles.

We find that users are rapidly exposed to more extreme content as the recommender evolves. We also find that a calibration-based intervention can slow down this polarization, but leaves open significant opportunities for future improvements

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19th, The [19th News]

Schedule A Part II of The 19th News' 2022 IRS Form 990 lists $41,320,779 gifts, grants, contributions, and membership fees received (not including any "unusual grant," - if any). Schedule B of that tax form lists financial contributors as "RESTRICTED" (i.e. declines to name them).

• Venable LLP, Venable.com, 2018-07-18] Disclosure of Donors on Form 990 Filings No Longer Required for Most Non-Charities

On Monday, July 16, 2018, the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) tax-exempt organizations, among others, will no longer be required to disclose their large donors on their annual Form 990 filings.

The issue of disclosing donors of $5,000 or more on Schedule B of the Form 990 series filings submitted by nonprofit organizations each year has long been a sensitive one. Nonprofits worry about other organizations poaching their donors. And many donors, when giving to a sensitive or controversial cause, do not want their names publicly known. This latter issue has been exacerbated by the greatly increased use of section 501(c)(4) by organizations that want to make independent expenditures in political campaigns since the Citizens United Supreme Court case in 2010 made that possible [Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010)]. Much debate about the IRS' need for donor information has ensued. In making Form 990 filings available to the public, the IRS has redacted (and permitted nonprofits themselves to redact) the names and addresses of contributors. Nonetheless, information has been mistakenly released by the IRS from time to time, and pressure for change has been building.

The IRS released a new Revenue Procedure, Rev. Proc. 2018-38, which provides that Form 990 filers other than section 501(c)(3) organizations and section 527 organizations (which are political organizations, including political action committees) will no longer have to release the names and addresses of their donors. The requirement that section 501(c)(3) and section 527 organizations list their donors cannot be waived by the IRS, because it is statutory [Internal Revenue Code sections 6033(b) (for 501(c)(3) organizations), 6104(b) (for section 527 organizations)].

[ ... snip ... ]

The 19th is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Our stories are free to republish in accordance with these guidelines.

• Bias Rating: LEFT  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

Founded in 2020 by Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora, The 19th News is a nonprofit organization and website that serves women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. According to their About page they state "We're an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy." The name of the organization is based on the 19th Amendment  [Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution], which gave women the right to vote. They add an asterisk at the end to indicate that work still needs to be done, as women and minorities continue to be disenfranchised at the ballot box.

Both Emily Ramshaw and Amanda Zamora were formerly on staff at the left-leaning The Texas Tribune.

Funded by / Ownership

The 19th is a nonprofit that was initially funded with 5 million dollars provided by Craig Newmark ($500,000), Kathryn Murdoch ($1 million), Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors  [Rockefeller Foundation]'s  Reproductive Health and Women's Rights Collaborative ($1 million) - and various amounts from The Ford Foundation, the Emerson Collective  [see also: Axios  |  The Atlantic], the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation,   Abigail Disney,   Arnold Ventures, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Revenue is currently derived through donations and membership fees.

Analysis / Bias

In review, The 19th primarily reports news and commentary on government and politics as it relates to women, the LGBTQ community, and people of color. The 19th publishes original news reporting and often with minimally loaded wording such as "Law enforcement officers keep arresting Black women elected officials." This story like all the rest is properly sourced to credible media and information outlets such as The Associated Press, Rutgers.edu, PBS, and The Washington Post. Story selection favors the left covering topics such as climate change, human rights, and inequality.

Editorially, The 19th aligns with the Left as they frequently publish negative articles concerning conservatives and in particular former President Donald Trump such as "Trump wielded toxic masculinity as a weapon. It hurt America." In 2020 and 2021, The 19th reported on the coronavirus  [COVID-19 pandemic] as it relates to women, persons of color, and the LGBTQ always taking a pro-science approach: "CDC study shows gender, racial gaps in COVID cases among young people." Further, The 19th support the consensus of science when it comes to climate change. In general, The 19th reports the news factually and with a consistent left-leaning progressive bias.

Failed Fact Checks

None in the Last 5 years.

On our anniversary, we're reflecting on the work that our readers have made possible and what's next in the consequential year ahead. On January 27, 2020, when we first shared The 19th with the world, we were bracing for a wildly consequential presidential election, one that seemed to put our very democracy at stake. Our work - critical reporting at the intersection of gender, politics and policy - had never felt more needed. Our audiences - women and LGBTQ+ people, particularly those from underrepresented communities - had never felt more overlooked. But what we predicted would be a busy news cycle instead became a relentless one that would extend through our first three years.

A global pandemic. The killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. The Capitol insurrection. The first woman - and first woman of color - vice president. The overturning of Roe v. Wade. The assault on LGBTQ+ rights nationwide. All of this happened against the backdrop of a fast-eroding news industry, with dramatic layoffs, heartbreaking closures, and far fewer reporters holding the powerful to account, let alone bringing diverse and representative coverage to American newsrooms.

Throughout it all, The 19th remains a true bright spot - thanks to the commitment and support of our readers and members. On our fourth birthday, we're reflecting on the work that you've made possible.

Our year in review

Over the past year, we published more than 600 stories, from accountability journalism that led an anti-abortion Arizona judge to recuse himself from a critical reproductive rights case, to a years-long investigation into allegations of druggings at a politically prominent Los Angeles LGBTQ+ club.

We won our first Online Journalism Award for breaking news coverage in the aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision.

Our free distribution model led our stories to be republished hundreds of times, in national outlets like the PBS NewsHour and HuffPost; local outlets like MinnPost and Connecticut Mirror; and community- and issue-specific outlets like Capital B News and Inside Climate News.

[ ... snip ... ]

On that sustainability note: To date we've raised nearly $50 million in service of our journalism from more than 14,000 different donors. And we've continued to do our level best to care for our team, including providing six months of fully paid parental leave and four months of caregiver/elder care leave.

• U.S. IRS Form 990: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer: 19th News

[ ... snip ... ]

When The 19th [Wikipedia: The 19th] went live on Jan. 27, 2020, "our work - critical reporting at the intersection of gender, politics and policy - had never felt more needed," CEO Emily Ramshaw wrote on The 19th's fourth anniversary last month [January 2024]. Now, several years, a pandemic and nearly 60 employees later, an award-winning documentary film about that period is available for 19th fans and readers who want to witness those early days for themselves.

"Breaking the News" (PBS) follows the inception, launch, and fledgling triumphs and challenges of The 19th's newsroom. It's a time capsule that spans major news events critical to The 19th's evolution: the coronavirus pandemic, the killing of Breonna Taylor, the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It also documents The 19th's internal struggles to overhaul age-old industry precedents while taking responsibility for its own shortcomings.

[ ... snip ... ]

The 19th is coming to the Tribeca Film Festival  [Wikipedia: Tribeca Festival]! A feature-length documentary about our nonprofit newsroom's first three years, "Breaking the News," will premiere at the prestigious festival in mid-2023-06.

The film Breaking the News" - made independently by a fleet of Emmy Awards-nominated and Academy Awards-nominated directors and producers, including Heather Courtney, Princess A. Hairston, Chelsea Hernandez, and Diane Moy Quon (Diane Quon - follows The 19th team through the trials and tribulations of The 19th's early start-up days. The film documents some of the biggest stories of our lifetimes - from the COVID-19 "she-cession," to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, to the voter suppression and police killings that roiled an already consequential election year (2022), to the attacks on LGBTQ+ rights nationally. The film also follows our search for culture, equity and capital amid a news business in crisis - as well as our efforts to balance our personal lives, children, and of course, dogs, with the pressures of launching a start-up in a pandemic.

It took courage for The 19th team to let our guard down and allow cameras into our personal and professional lives - knowing our mistakes, our challenges, our emotions would be visible to the world. The film is sometimes raw, always candid and unquestionably vulnerable. Most of all, we hope it is a service to our industry: a lucid picture of what it takes to challenge the status quo and break the mold in American media. "Breaking the News" will be screened multiple times at Tribeca, which takes place 2023-06-{07-18) in New York City.

The 19th is excited to announce a new partnership with Digital Women Leaders (DWL), a free mentorship program for women and non-binary people working in news aimed at addressing gender disparities in journalism leadership. DWL was created by Katie Hawkins-Gaar, co-founder of the Poynter Institute's Leadership Academy for Women in Media. Katie Hawkins-Gaar will design a specific mentorship program for The 19th's fellows.

As part of the partnership, each of The 19th's five Frances Ellen Watkins Harper fellows will be paired with a mentor who specializes in the concentration the fellow is focused on: reporting, audience engagement or product. Fellows will have access to 1:1 mentorship for the second half of the fellowship and the months following the end of the program as they transition to work beyond The 19th.

"Digital Women Leaders has transformed the careers of some of the most accomplished women in U.S. journalism and I'm thrilled that our fellows will be able to tap into this incredible network even beyond their time with us," said Kari Cobham, The 19th's director of fellowships.

60 Minutes

⚠️ CAUTION: generally factual but sometimes potentially questionable content; carefully scrutinize authors and content for bias and truthfulness. Notable examples include fluffy pieces by 60 Minutes host Lesley Stahl.

60 Minutes is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, 60 Minutes was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard - who distinguished it from other news programs by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation. In 2002, 60 Minutes was ranked number six on TV Guide's list of the "50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time." In 2013, 60 Minutes was ranked number 24 on TV Guide's list of the "60 Best Series of All Time". The New York Times has called 60 Minutes "one of the most esteemed news magazines on American television".

[ ... snip ... ]

Controversies

60 Minutes has been praised for landmark journalism and received many awards. However, 60 Minutes has also become embroiled in some controversy, including (in order of appearance) ...

[ ... snip ... ]

60 Minutes: Questionable Lesley Stahl's interviews

60 Minutes is being excoriated for a story on transgender health care because of 60 Minutes' emphasis on people who regret transitioning. The story - which aired Sunday (2021-05-23), - saw Lesley Stahl interview four people who regretted going through gender transition and two health care professionals who said they support trans people's right to gender-affirming care, but think these procedures are sometimes undertaken without sufficient consideration.

"It greatly concerns me where the field has been going," psychologist Laura Edwards-Leeper told Lesley Stahl. "I feel like what is happening is unethical and irresponsible in some places." One of the detransitioners who appeared - Grace Lidinsky-Smith - is a cofounder of several organizations, including the Gender Care Consumer Advocacy Network (GCCAN) - which has been repudiated by another cofounder.

The 60 Minutes piece also featured Dr. Lee Savio Beers - [past-]president of the American Academy of Pediatrics - which opposes bills proposed in several states that would ban gender-affirming treatment for minors. One such anti-trans bill has become law in Arkansas, and a more limited bill has been signed in Tennessee. "These are not experimental treatments," Lee Savio Beers said. "They're really based in scientific literature, they're based in decades and decades of expert experience, and they're backed by a number of major medical organizations."

And Human Rights Campaign (HRC) President Alphonso David appeared briefly, saying trans people "are being further marginalized and victimized by elected officials, by anti-equality forces." But 60 Minutes gave much less screen time to Lee Savio Beers and Alphonso David, than to those who regretted or questioned transition.

GLAAD  (@GLAAD) responded with a seven-point tweet.

• Tonight @60Minutes @LesleyRStahl aired a shameful segment fearmongering about trans youth. Parents of trans youth could walk away with the false belief that young people are being rushed into medical transition. That is simply untrue. (1/7)

• ... As the 60 Minutes piece noted, every major medical association supports affirming, age-appropriate care for trans youth and the guidelines for that care are safe and well-established. And yet, the majority of the story was devoted to "raising concerns" about youth accessing that care. (2/7)

• ... The segment also wrongfully implied that trans YouTubers and online communities which affirm trans youth are somehow brainwashing kids and turning them trans. That is dangerous and at the same time ridiculous. Aren't we past arguing that media can turn people gay or trans? (3/7)

• ... At a time when over 30 states have introduced bills targeting trans people, #60Minutes spotlighted the real harm such bills will have, but also chose to platform activists who try to sow doubt about the need for trans-affirming healthcare. (4/7)

• ... Furthermore, failing to disclose that a person profiled in the story is the president of a group that actively seeks to limit affirming transition-related healthcare is poor journalism and a disservice to viewers. (5/7)

• ... #60Minutes heard concerns from several trans leaders and, after spending months on the segment, they delivered a piece which still promulgates the same anti-trans dog whistles that we hear from anti-LGBTQ activists and in state legislatures like Arkansas. (6/7)

• ... Learn more about how to support and affirm trans youth from actual medical authorities at the ineAmerican Academy of Pediatrics  |  @AmerAcadPeds (7/7)

Chase Strangio - deputy director for trans justice at the American Civil Liberties Union's LGBT and HIV Project - tweeted about the story as well.

• @60Minutes, Lesley Stahl, Alexandra Poolos, and Collette Richards knew exactly the harm they were causing with last night's segment. They knew it was the wrong moment and a dangerous, unaccountable and limited angle. But they did it anyway. That's on all of you. -- Chase Strangio (@Chase Strangio)

The Human Rights Campaign did not respond directly to the 60 Minutes story, but sent out a press release detailing facts about gender-affirming and transition-related care - noting such care is lifesaving, that what it entails is different for every person, and that regret and detransitioning are extremely rare.

60 Minutes Overtime - an online program featuring material not included in the 60 Minutes broadcast - did have these comments from Alphonso David:

"I have a number of concerns about a story that talks about detransitioning without really focusing on the larger context of the trans experience. ... We also have to talk about the people who successfully transition -- the vast majority of people who do. And I'm concerned about that young person who is facing stigmatization and discrimination at home and at school, and they may attempt suicide because society has told them that they're worthless.

"I'm concerned about a population that has already been victimized and marginalized, and how a story that is taken out of context could further victimize and marginalize this community. ... Bringing a story to light about detransitioning without talking about the vast majority of people who positively transition, would cause concern because it sends a message. We need to also elevate the positive stories of people who successfully transition."

Some other critiques of the story:

• Mx. D.E. Anderson: Hi, here's more about the detransitioner who appeared on 60 Minutes last night without 60 Minutes disclosing that she's the president of a detrans advocacy group that seeks to limit care to trans people in general, and has very questionable ties to conversion therapy. Grace Lidinsky-Smith has worked with Rethink Identity Medicine Ethics, Inc (ReIME) - a group that promotes anti-trans conversion therapy and "gender industry" conspiracy theories. ... -- Mx. D.E. Anderson (@Mx. D.E. Anderson)

• THEE mj: @60Minutes you made a choice. At a moment when trans ppl are in particular danger in this country, when trans rights are being eroded at this very moment, you choose to amplify an anti-trans, right-wing talking point. We see you 😡

• Zach Radcliff (he/they): #60minutes piece on #transhealth is horrible. They're focused on detransitioning instead of the issue of anti-trans legislation and more. Literally, an expect talks about how over fixation on detransitioners harms the trans community but they chose an anti-trans narrative

• Zach Ford (he/they): Oh wow that @60Minutes segment focusing on detransitioning is about as dangerous and one-sided as it could have been. Trans regret rates top out at 5%. Telling a story only about detransitioners with only skeptical providers is spreading anti-trans propaganda. -- Zack Ford (@Zack Ford)

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has called for a "national divorce"  [secession]; lied about the 2020 election; spread conspiracy theories about 9/11, the 2018 Parkland shooting, and Jewish space lasers setting forests on fire in California; and repeatedly expressed support for fatal violence against Democrats [Wikipedia: Marjorie Taylor Greene: Advocacy based on conspiracy theories]. And Marjorie Taylor Greene was given an open platform on 60 Minutes. On Sunday (2023-04-02), the radical member of U.S. Congress - Marjorie Taylor Greene - joined CBS' Lesley Stahl for an exclusive and much-promoted interview special, in which the duo were seen walking the halls of Congress and Marjorie Taylor Greene was filmed showing off her CrossFit skills.

Aside from the odd "day in the life" aesthetic of the interview, Lesley Stahl's interview of Marjorie Taylor Greene - and perhaps CBS' edits of it - displayed a shocking deference to Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and her dangerous ideas. One moment in particular embodied the shortcomings of the interview: just enough pushback to show an effort, not enough to prove that the effort meant anything at all. Lesley Stahl asked Marjorie Taylor Greene about things Marjorie Taylor Greene has said in the past, like: "The Democrats are a party of pedophiles." "I would definitely say so," Marjorie Taylor Greene affirmed. "They support grooming children." "They are not pedophiles," Lesley Stahl responded. "Why would you say that?" "Democrats, Democrats support-- even Joe Biden, the president himself, supports children being sexualized and having transgender surgeries," Marjorie Taylor Greene said. "Sexualizing children is what pedophiles do to children." "Wow. Okay," Lesley Stahl responded. "But my question really is why can't you fight for what you believe in without all that name-calling and without the personal attacks?"

That Lesley Stahl was unprepared to more directly confront for a major talking point among Republicans, and that Lesley Stahl reduced Republican's attacks on trans kids and gender-affirming care to "name-calling," speaks volumes about the folly of the entire 60 Minutesinterview. After an ensuing back-and-forth about name-calling, Lesley Stahl offered to move on. "Let me button this up and we'll move on," Lesley Stahl said, before asking about Marjorie Taylor Greene's hopes to bring America closer to her views, which include instituting a Christian government  [theocracy], banning abortion nationally, defunding the FBI, and stopping immigration for four years. Lesley Stahl focused on the former [theocracy]. "The Constitution - the very First Amendment - prohibits having a religion in the government," Lesley Stahl pointed out. "Yet, the Founding Fathers quoted the Bible constantly and were driven by their faith," Marjorie Taylor Greene responded, somehow with the production leaving that as the last word. The 60 Minutes interview concludes almost like a foreboding movie trailer.

"As a fervent supporter of the now-indicted Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene was a featured speaker at Donald Trump's rally in Waco, Texas last weekend (2023-03-25). While Marjorie Taylor Greene is adored in Texas, the latest national poll has her approval rating at just 29 percent," a following voiceover read. A clip of Donald Trump follows. "Marjorie Taylor Marjorie Taylor Greene, you happened to be here," Donald Trump says. "Would you like to run for the Senate? I will fight like hell for you, I'll tell ya." "The question for her, and the country, is can Marjorie Taylor Greene expand her brash MTG brand beyond the right wing, populist base?" the voice-over finishes.

This half-critical, half-not approach characterized much of the interview. "Before Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene helped run the family construction company in Georgia," the interview's voice-over read in another part of the special on Marjorie Taylor Greene. The voice-over continued, describing Marjorie Taylor Greene as "known to be smart and fearless and has a history of believing in conspiracy theories." Why, exactly, Marjorie Taylor Greene is characterized as "smart" - and by whom - is not completely clear. And in a broader sense, calling Green "smart and fearless" is like calling The Simpsons' Mr. Burns "resourceful and bold."

The 60 Minutesproduction overall was too willing to move on - offering mere samplings of Marjorie Taylor Greene's issues paired with a touch of pushback. It embodied the sort-of journalism that insists on its merit by arguing that the best spokesperson for showing the wrongness of something is itself, rather than another observer explaining why exactly it is wrong. Lesley Stahl doesn't need to actually interrogate the absurdity or danger of something Marjorie Taylor Greene says; Lesley Stahl just needs to push back once to show the contrast, and then the viewers can just see for themselves.

In some sense, the production felt like a time-warp back to 2016; the special was a piece built for intrigue, a self-proclaimed holistic examination into someone who is neither intriguing nor enigmatic. And, though it should be needless to say, apparently it is not: providing such room for complexity about someone so simply unfit to represent this country is exactly how we got Donald Trump - and exactly how we'll keep getting more like him (heck, and maybe even more of him).

Agence France Presse (AFP)

⚠️ CAUTION: potentially questionable content; carefully scrutinize authors and content for bias and truthfulness. Concerns regarding questionable content are due, in part, to ties to and funding from the French government. This concern is partly mitigated by virtue of the AFP Fact Check service - a department within Agence France Presse (AFP), a multi-lingual, multicultural news agency whose mission is to provide accurate, balanced and impartial coverage of news wherever and whenever it happens in the world on a continuous basis. As guaranteed by its founding statute, AFP speaks with an independent voice free from political, commercial or ideological influence. These commitments are reflected in AFP's Charter and editorial standards, which are detailed here.

Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

Founded in 1835, Agence France Presse (AFP) is an international French news agency headquartered in Paris, France. French writer and translator Charles-Louis Havas founded Agence France Presse (AFP) as Agency Havas. In the early days, Charles-Louis Havas translated articles from foreign papers, selling the translations to bankers, traders, and politicians using carrier pigeons to dispatch news. Agence Havas was the first to start using the Morse Telegraph, which enabled them to transmit news quickly and became a primary means of distribution throughout France and Europe. Subsequently, Charles-Louis Havas transformed his company into a multinational advertising and public relations company.

Two of his employees, Paul Julius Reuter and Bernard Wolff, later founded their own news agencies, Reuters in London and Wolff in Germany. Following the liberation of Paris in 1944, Journalists of the French Resistance established AFP (Agence France Presse) as a wire service. The French government gave AFP the assets of Agence Havas, including the Paris building that became its headquarters.

As of April 2018, The Chairman & Chief Executive Officer is Fabrice Fries. Agence France Presse's Global Editor in Chief is Philip Chetwynd  [local copy].

Funded by / Ownership

In 1981, the New Internationalist published an article called "The Big Four" (referring to the 'big four' news agencies United Press International,  The Associated Press,   Reuters, and Agence France Presse) in which they described Agence France Presse as "AFP is the only one which depends on subsidy from the government of its company - usually through official subscriptions by government offices. As a result, it is often regarded as the voice of the French government."

Currently, Agence France Presse (AFP) is still supported financially by the French state and gets up to 40 percent of its funding from the French government but maintains its editorial independence by parliament. In April 2018, AFP's chairman and CEO Emmanuel Hoog stepped down after failing to secure government support. The French state only controls three of the 18 seats on AFP's board; however, a CEO can't operate without its confidence since the French government, through its various agencies, is AFP's principal source of revenue.

Analysis / Bias

In review, AFP delivers news in video, text, photographs, multimedia, graphics, and video graphics. Agence France Presse (AFP) utilizes neutral headlines such as "Poland's Supreme Court top judge defies retirement law," and "Waves of strikes pound south Syria after talks fail." All information contained in news articles is sourced through quotations, links, and the use of field journalists covering stories. A factual search reveals that AFP has not failed any fact checks. In fact, AFP is considered a credible fact-checker in itself.

According to a Slate Magazine article, AFP first distributed and then tried to retract an unflattering photo of French President Francois Hollande, but this caused criticism as Slate states, "AFP had bowed to political pressure, thus causing some people to call into question the agency's credibility." Further, some organizations, such as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), claim that AFP has an anti-Israel bias. However, The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) is a powerful Boston-based lobby group that tries to curb criticism of Israel in U.S. media. In other words, CAMERA has a strong pro-Israel bias.

Although we did not find substantial evidence of State bias in our review, it must be considered that 40% of their funding comes from the French government, which may influence reporting.

Failed Fact Checks

None to date. They are an IFCN fact-checker.

AlterNet

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources. AlterNet.org often lifts articles from Daily Kos and The New Civil Rights Movement - which due to questionable content is excluded from sources. Alternet also frequently lifts articles from Salon (and sometimes vice versa). While MediaBiasFactCheck.com rates Salon.com as "mostly factual," due to the overlap between content posted, shared, and reposted on DailyKos.com, AlterNet.org, The New Civil Rights Movement, Salon.com, ... I am excluding these three sources.

Alternet is a politically left-leaning website that was launched in 1998 by the non-profit now known as the Independent Media Institute. In 2018, the website was acquired by owners of The Raw Story. Some Alternet content is republished on Salon.

• The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies  [founded in 1987; now: Association of Alternative Newsmedia] founded the Institute for Alternative Journalism, which was incorporated in 1983-12.

• The Institute for Alternative Journalism became the Independent Media Institute some time before December 1999.

• AlterNet was founded in the fall of 1987 by the Institute for Alternative Journalism.

• On 2018-04-09, it was announced that AlterNet was acquired by owners of The Raw Story, an online news organization, under the newly created company AlterNet Media. In an online statement, Raw Story founder John K. Byrne stated, "AlterNet will continue to carry content from the Independent Media Institute, its prior owner. Thus, much of the content you expect will remain the same. You will see articles by former AlterNet writers appearing with the Independent Media Institute byline."  [Source: Wikipedia.]

• Salon

• Raw Story

• Independent Media Institute

Funded by / Ownership. Alternet is owned by the owners of The Raw Story under the name Alternet Media. The website is funded through online advertising.

Analysis / Bias.Overall, we rate Alternet far Left Biased based on story selection and wording that always favors the left. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to a few failed fact checks as well as the promotion of pseudoscience.

In review, Alternet publishes news with a far left bias through story selection and the use of emotionally loaded words such as these: "Trump goes off in an all-caps New Year's Eve Twitter meltdown: 'MEXICO IS PAYING FOR THE WALL,' and "The F Word: The Craven Right Wing Is Now Smearing Teenage School Shooting Survivors." The website also features a separate news category that focuses on negative reports about Donald Trump. When it comes to sourcing, Alternet typically uses known mainstream sources such as the New York Daily News and NBC News.

Alternet also frequently delves into pseudoscience with the promotion of anti-GMO propaganda, which is not consistent with the consensus of science. Alternet has consistently reported on the connection between cell phones and cancer, which is misleading as there is not a scientific consensus on whether radiation for cell phones causes cancer or not.

In general, Alternet consistently publishes pro-Left news stories and those that denigrate the right.

A factual search reveals that Alternet has a Mixed claim via Snopes and false claim from Check Your Fact.

Overall, we rate Alternet far Left Biased based on story selection and wording that always favors the left. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to a few failed fact checks as well as the promotion of pseudoscience. (5/13/2016) Updated (D. Van Zandt 12/30/2019)

Bauman Foundation: Grants, by Fiscal Year (July 01 - June 30)
Data captured 2020-09-11.
Grantee	Fiscal Year	Amount	Cumulative Amount
AlterNet	2008-09	$25,000	$25,000

American Conservative, The

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources: donor / funding information not disclosed; concerns over conservatism bias; Advisory Board includes the reprehensible Tucker Carlson  [FOX News shill, conspiracy theorist, disinformationist]; ...

The American Conservative is a magazine published by the American Ideas Institute which was founded in 2002. The publication states that it exists to promote a conservatism that opposes unchecked power in government and business alike; promote the flourishing of families and communities through vibrant markets and free people; and embrace realism and restraint in foreign affairs based on America's national interests, otherwise known as paleoconservative. Originally published twice a month, it was reduced to monthly publication in August 2009, and since February 2013, it has been bi-monthly.

The American Conservative was founded by Pat Buchanan,   Scott McConnell and Taki Theodoracopulos in 2002 in opposition to the Iraq War. Daniel Strauss wrote:

Bias Rating: RIGHT-CENTER  |  Factual Reporting: MOSTLY FACTUAL  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

Founded in 2002 and published by the American Ideas Institute,  The American Conservative is a bi-monthly journal of right-leaning opinion. According to their About page, they state "The American Conservative exists to promote a "Main Street" conservatism that opposes unchecked power in government and business; promotes the flourishing of families and communities through vibrant markets and free people; and embraces realism and restraint in foreign affairs based on America's vital national interests."

The American Conservative was founded by Pat Buchanan,   Scott McConnell and Taki Theodoracopulos in 2002 in opposition to the Iraq War. The current editor is W. James Antle III.

Funded by / Ownership

The American Conservative is owned by the American Ideas Institute, a nonprofit organization that advances political conservationism. Sponsored content, advertising, and subscription fees generate revenue. The website does not disclose donor information.

Analysis / Bias

In review, The American Conservative has argued against American interventionism, against a debt-based fiscal policy, and against the intrusions on Americans' private lives by the institutions and mores that exist and the wisdom that underlies them. The American Conservative is a very well-written source with a libertarian perspective.

The American Conservative presents news and opinions with moderately loaded language: "What Happens When Kim Stands Trump Up at the Altar?" This story is very well sourced to Reuters and the National Interest. Although they are always opposed to Democratic Socialism, they also frequently report negatively on President Trump, especially as it relates to foreign policy. When it comes to science, The American Conservative supports the consensus of science with articles such as this: "A Judgement By Fire."

While they do not support the progressive agenda of a New Green Deal, they do acknowledge that action must be taken, albeit with a more free-market approach. Regardless of solutions, The American Conservative supports the consensus of science. However, during the 2020 United States presidential election, they have promoted election fraud information contrary to the findings of election experts. The article "Memorandum: How The 2020 Election Could Have Been Stolen" does not produce a single link to outside sources to verify the author's opinions.

Editorially, they support limited government, limited military presence in other countries, and general nationalism. In other words, this is a libertarian / paleoconservative organization. In general, they publish mostly opinion-based content that is mostly factual but sometimes uses poor sourcing techniques.

Failed Fact Checks

None in the Last 5 years.

American Oversight

⚠️ CAUTION: potentially questionable content; carefully scrutinize authors and content for bias and truthfulness. American Oversight is a politically biased, 501(c)(3) nonprofit that won't disclose it's funding, donors - carefully scrutinize authors and content for bias and truthfulness.

Bias Rating: LEFT  |  Factual Reporting: MOSTLY FACTUAL  |  Country: USA  |  Press Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE  |  Media Type: Organization/Foundation  |  Traffic/Popularity: Minimal Traffic  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: MEDIUM CREDIBILITY

History

Founded in 2017, American Oversight is a watchdog organization that uses litigation to access documents under FOIA (The ) protections. According to their about page, American Oversight is an "ethics watchdog and is the top Freedom of Information Act  [Freedom of Information Act (United States)] litigator investigating the Trump Administration." American Oversight targets federal agencies such as Housing and Urban Development and Education departments  [United States Department of Housing and Urban Development  |  United States Department of Education]. Austin Evers (Former Senior Counsel under the Obama Administration) is the Executive Director and founder of American Oversight, and the senior adviser is Melanie Sloan (a former Democratic Congressional aide and founder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The American Oversight website lists the staff and their bios. American Oversight is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Funded by / Ownership

Revenue for American Oversight is primarily derived from donations. According to USA Today,  American Oversight is organized "as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and doesn't plan to disclose its funding sources." Further, Melanie Sloan says, "We don't discuss our donors."

Analysis / Bias

American Oversight consists of the following sections: Investigation, States, Documents, and News. In 2018-04, American Oversight introduced its Parallel Investigations Initiative, and under the Documents section, you can filter through the numerous FOIA requests they file. On most days, they file multiple requests such as this: FOIA to DOI seeking records relating to mining leases held by a subsidiary of a company owned by Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner's Washington, D.C. landlord.

In review, American Oversight uses emotionally loaded language in its headlines, such as "Sessions Letter Shows DOJ Acted On Trump's Authoritarian Demand to Investigate Clinton" and "News Roundup: Trump Administration's Defiance of Congressional Subpoenas." American Oversight utilizes credible sources such as KFGO (radio station serving the metropolitan area), CBS News,   The Hill,   The New York Times,   The Washington Post, and Politico.

In general, American Oversight's sole purpose is to keep the former Trump Administration and its supporters accountable through document requests and lawsuits. In many ways, American Oversight is the left-leaning equivalent of Judicial Watch, minus Judicial Watch's numerous failed fact checks.

Failed Fact Checks

None in the Last 5 years.

American Prospect, The

Bias Rating: LEFT  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

Founded in 1990, The American Prospect is a quarterly American political magazine and website dedicated to American liberalism. Based in Washington, D.C., The American Prospect says it aims "to advance liberal and progressive goals through reporting, analysis, and debate about today's realities and tomorrow's possibilities." The magazine was founded by Robert Kuttner,   Robert Reich, and Paul Starr, with Kuttner and Starr currently serving as editors.

Funded by / Ownership

The nonprofit The American Prospect Inc. owns The American Prospect. Donations, advertising, and subscription fees generate revenue. The website does not disclose donors.

Analysis / Bias

In review, The American Prospect reports original political news from a liberal perspective. Stories are well written, and headlines contain moderately loaded language that favors the left, such as this: ...

Editorially, The American Prospect favors liberal positions; however, they present factual and evidence-based information.

Failed Fact Checks

None to date.

American Public Media

American Public Media is an American company that produces and distributes public radio programs in the United States, the second largest company of its type after NPR. American Public Media's non-profit parent, American Public Media Group, also owns and operates radio stations in Minnesota and California.  American Public Media's station brands include Minnesota Public Radio and Southern California Public Radio. Based in St. Paul,   Minnesota,  American Public Media is best known for distribution of the national financial news program Marketplace.

Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

Founded in 2004, American Public Media is the second-largest producer and distributor of public radio programs in the United States after NPR. American Public Media produces content for NPR.

Funded by / Ownership

American Public Media Group is the parent company of American Public Media, Minnesota Public Radio, and Southern California Public Radio. American Public Media Group operates Public Radio Market under license from American Public Media.

Analysis / Bias

In review, like NPR, American Public Media does not use loaded words, and all information is sourced correctly. Specifically, they use BBC as their primary news source, which is highly credible with a slight leftward bias in story selection.

Failed Fact Checks

None in the Last 5 years.

Associated Press, The (AP)

Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED  |  Factual Reporting: VERY HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

Funded by / Ownership

The Associated Press (AP) is a nonprofit news cooperative with a profit of $1.6 million in 2016. It also sells content to other media organizations. According to an article titled "AP reports loss on one-time accounting charges,"  The Associated Press lost $74 million in 2017, and it states the reason as "mostly due to one-time accounting charges related to the federal tax overhaul passed late last year." AP's Chief Financial Officer is Ken Dale.

Analysis / Bias

AP utilizes moderate-loaded language in their headlines in their political coverage, such as "AP Exclusive: Before Trump job, Manafort worked to aid Putin." However, the articles are always well-sourced. When it comes to their economic coverage, they maintain neutral language and least biased coverage: "U.S.-China tariffs: What's behind them, who stands to be hurt?" The AP also publishes well-researched and sourced articles such as "Science Says: How family separation may affect kids' brains," utilizing pro-science sources such as the American Academy of Pediatrics.

When it comes to reporting on the Trump administration, The Associated Press usually maintains a neutral voice. However, in some articles, the author demonstrates bias through loaded emotional language such as this: "PUSHED Ukrainian officials to investigate BASELESS corruption allegations against the Bidens." While this statement is factual, using "Pushed" and "Baseless" conveys Rudy Giuliani's negative emotions. In general, The Associated Press publishes low-biased, highly factual news and, in some cases, left-biased editorializing by their authors.

Failed Fact Checks

They are a certified IFCN fact-checker.

Association of Alternative Newsmedia

Association of Alternative Newsmedia
Sources (Wikipedia): • Association of Alternative Newsmedia • Independent Media Institute
Name	Association of Alternative Newsmedia
Former name	Association of Alternative Newsweeklies
Abbreviation	ANN
Founded	1978
Type	501(c)(6) nonprofit organization
Mission	Clearinghouse for stories generated by Association of Alternative Newsweeklies members
Headquarters	Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
Region served	Metropolitan areas in 42 states  |  Washington D.C.  |  4 Canadian Provinces
President	Graham Jarrett (Orlando Weekly)
Former President	Molly Willmott (current Association Manager)
Executive Director	Jason Zaragoza
Membership	Alternative weekly newspapers
Affiliations	Alternative Newsweekly Foundation
Derivatives:	Institute for Alternative Journalism (IAJ): incorporated 1983-12; by 1999-12 became the Independent Media Institute AlterNet: founded 1987 by IAJ
Revenue	2014: $556,323
Expenses	2014: $796,491
Website	AAN.org

The Association of Alternative Newsmedia (ANN), formerly known as the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, is a trade association of alternative weekly newspapers in North America. It was founded in 1978 in Seattle, Washington, with 30 newspapers from America's largest cities. Today, it provides services to many generally liberal or progressive weekly newspapers across the United States and in Canada. The association is made up of 131 newspapers which are published in 42 states, Washington D.C., and four Canadian provinces. States not represented are Alaska, Delaware, Kansas, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia.

In July 2011, the organization's name was changed from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies to the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, by a vote of members attending the group's annual meeting.

The Association of Alternative Newsmedia also operates AltWeeklies.com  [2021: now redirects to main landing page AAN.org] - a Web portal that highlights the best news stories, features, arts criticism and political commentary from its member newspapers.

Members

Independent Media Institute

• The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies  [founded in 1987; now: Association of Alternative Newsmedia] founded the Institute for Alternative Journalism, which was incorporated in 1983-12.

• The Institute for Alternative Journalism became the Independent Media Institute some time before December 1999.

• AlterNet was founded in the fall of 1987 by the Institute for Alternative Journalism.

• 2018-04-09, it was announced that AlterNet was acquired by owners of The Raw Story, an online news organization, under the newly created company AlterNet Media.

AlterNet was founded in the fall of 1987 by the Institute for Alternative Journalism, which was incorporated in December 1983 with a mission to serve as a clearinghouse for important local stories generated by the members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies  [now: Association of Alternative Newsmedia]. The founding editor of AlterNet was Alan Green, who with his deputy, Margaret Engle, created print and electronic mechanisms to syndicate both the works of Association of Alternative Newsweeklies papers and freelance contributors, among them Michael Moore and Abbie Hoffman. Margaret Engle took over for Alan Green in 1989 and ran the news service until 1993, in that time dramatically expanding AlterNet's base of contributors and client newspapers. Upon her resignation, Engle was succeeded by Don Hazen, who had been hired by the Institute for Alternative Journalism in 1991 to be its first executive director. AlterNet publishes a combination of policy critiques, investigative reports and analysis, grassroots success stories, and personal narratives.

Christine Triano was Associate Director of the Institute for Alternative Journalism, in 1996.

Media Heroes are annual awards by the Institute for Alternative Journalism. Frederick Clarkson was named among the "Media Heroes of 1992" James Danky was named a Media Hero in 1993.

In 1995, Media Heroes awards went to Public Media Center,  Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting,  Institute for Global Communications, Janine Jackson, Laura Flanders,   CounterSpin, Gary Delgado, David Barsamian,  Alternative Radio,  Haiti Truth Team, Salim Muwakkil, John Schwartz, and Artists for a Hate Free America were presented in MediaCulture Review  (January/February 1995).

In 1996, Leslie Savan was named one of "The Top Ten Media Heroes". Patricia Scott, and Julie Drizin were named to the "Top Ten Media Heroes of 1996" Paul Klite, Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Media Watch, received a Media Hero Award from the Institute for Alternative Journalism in 1996. Amy Goodman,   Bob Herbert,   Detroit Sunday Journal,   Gary Webb,   Herbert Schiller,   James Ridgeway,   Karl Grossman,   Mumia Abu-Jamal,   Norman Solomon, and Urvashi Vaid received the 1997 Media Hero Award.

In 1997, Media Heroes awards were presented at the second Media & Democracy Congress. The Institute for Alternative Journalism named David Barsamian one of its Top Ten Media Heroes.

The Institute for Alternative Journalism became the Independent Media Institute some time before December 1999. After the sale of AlterNet to the new company - AlterNet Media in April 2018 - the Independent Media Institute launched a series of new programs including the Make It Right Project.

Atlas Obscura

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources due to fake articles (disinformation) - a consequence of reliance on user-generated content, such as fabricator Blair Mastbaum.

Atlas Obscura is an American-based online magazine and travel company. It was founded in 2009 by author Joshua Foer and documentary filmmaker/author Dylan Thuras. It catalogs unusual and obscure travel destinations via user-generated content. The articles on the website cover a number of topics including history, science, food, and obscure places.

• Wikipedia, 2024-01-29" Blair Mastbaum

Blair Mastbaum (born January 24, 1979) is an American writer and a former model who lives in Brooklyn, New York. Mastbaum fabricated a series of stories published by Atlas Obscura. The articles were retracted after investigations found plagiarism, fabricated quotes and interviews, and misinformation.

Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED | Factual Reporting: HIGH | Country: USA | MBFC's Country Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE | Media Type: Website | Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic | MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY

2023-12-21: Overall, we rate Atlas Obscura as Least Biased based on non-political coverage and High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact-check record.

Atlantic, The

⚠️ CAUTION: potentially questionable content; carefully scrutinize authors and content for bias and truthfulness. The Atlantic has a history of publishing transphobic content - which warrants closer scrutiny: [theNation.com, 2023-02-23] I Signed The New York Times Open Letter. I Have More to Say.  The New York Times is not alone in its obscene coverage of transgender people. ... Other prestigious publications like The Atlantic,   The New Yorker, and New York Magazine have played their part in pushing forward narratives that put the lives of trans people in danger. ...

The Atlantic is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. ... After experiencing financial hardship and undergoing several ownership changes in the late 20th century, The Atlantic was purchased by businessman David G. Bradley, who refashioned it as a general editorial magazine primarily aimed at serious national readers and "thought leaders". In 2010, The Atlantic posted its first profit in a decade. In 2016, the periodical was named Magazine of the Year by the American Society of Magazine Editors. In 2017-07, David Bradley sold a majority interest in the publication to Laurene Powell Jobs's  Emerson Collective  [see also: Axios  |  The 19th].

TheAtlantic.com, provides daily coverage and analysis of breaking news, politics and international affairs, education, technology, health, science, and culture. theAtlantic.com's executive editor is Adrienne LaFrance, and the editor-in-chief is Israeli-American Jeffrey Goldberg.

Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

LEFT-CENTER BIAS: these media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes. These sources are generally trustworthy for information but may require further investigation. See all Left-Center sources. Overall, we rate The Atlantic Left-Center Biased due to editorial positions and High for factual reporting based on excellent sourcing of information and a clean fact check record.

... For the second year in a row, The Atlantic has been named winner of the National Magazine Award  for General Excellence. This is the top honor awarded by the American Society of Magazine Editors, and it is quite a privilege to win - especially given the quality of our fellow finalists, which included, among others, New York Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. ...

---

American Society of Magazine Editors Announces Winners of 2023 National Magazine Awards : ... The most prestigious honor - "General Excellence" - went to four publications. Winners were: The Atlantic,  The Marshall Project,  and two first-time winners: Cook's Illustrated, and Grist.

Axios

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources due to tampering of associated Wikipedia entry, founders' associations with { BuzzFeed  |  The Huffington Post  |  ... }, financial controversies; paid advertisers from neoliberal disinformationists { ExxonMobil  |  Koch Industries  |  proto-neo-fascism:   Axios fires reporter who called Ron DeSantis' press release "propaganda"  |  ... }; ...

Axios is an American news website based in Arlington County, Virginia. It was founded in 2016 and launched the following year by former Politico journalists Jim VandeHei,   Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz. The site's name is based on the Greek: "ἄξιος" ("áxios"), meaning "worthy".

Axios' articles are typically brief and matter-of-fact; most are shorter than 300 words and use bullet points so they are easier to scan. In addition to news articles, Axios produces daily and weekly industry-specific newsletters (including Mike Allen's Axios AM, a successor to his popular Playbook newsletter for Politico), two daily podcasts and a documentary news series on HBO.

History

Jim VandeHei said he wanted Axios to be a "mix between The Economist and Twitter". The company initially covered a mix of business, politics, technology, health care, and media. Jim VandeHei said Axios would focus on the "collision between tech and areas such as bureaucracy, healthcare, energy, and the transportation infrastructure". At launch, Nicholas Johnston, a former managing editor at Bloomberg L.P., was named editor-in-chief.

In the summer of 2016, Axios secured $10 million in a round of financing led by Lerer Hippeau  [see also: BuzzFeed discussion]. Backers include media-partner NBC News,   Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective  [see also: The 19th  |  The Atlantic],  Greycroft Partners, and David Bradley and Katherine Bradley - owners of Atlantic Media.

Axios had raised $30 million as of 2017-11. Axios planned to focus on "business, technology, politics, and media trends". Axios generates revenue through short-form native advertising and sponsored newsletters. It earned more than $10 million in revenue in its first seven months. Its advertisers include ExxonMobil and Koch Industries.

In 2017-01 Axios hired as an executive vice president Evan Ryan, the assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs and a former staffer for Vice President Joe Biden. As of 2017-03, the company said it had 60 employees with 40 working in editorial. Axios had 6 million visitors in 2017-09, according to Comscore. As of 2017-11, Axios said it had 200,000 subscribers to 11 newsletters, with an average open rate of 52%. The same month [2017-11], Axios said it would use a new $20 million investment to expand data analysis, product development, fund audience growth, and increase staff to 150, up from 89.

In 2019-03 and 2019-04, HuffPost and Wired reported that Axios had paid a firm to improve its reputation by lobbying for changes to the Wikipedia articles on Axios and Jonathan Swan (an Australian journalist who works as a political reporter for Axios  |  Jonathan Swan: controversy).

In July 2020, Axios received $4.8 million in federal loans from the Paycheck Protection Program for salary replacement during the COVID-19 pandemic. It later returned the money, with Politico journalists Jim VandeHei explaining that the loans had become "politically polarizing". In 2020-09, The Wall Street Journal reported that Axios was on track to be profitable in 2020 "despite the economic turmoil stemming from the COVID-19 coronavirus [COVID-19 pandemic] that led to broad layoffs and pay cuts at many media outlets."

In 2021-05 The Wall Street Journal reported that merger discussions between Axios and The Athletic had ended, with The Athletic opting to pursue a deal with The New York Times.

Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

Axios Media or Axios is a news and information company started in 2016 by Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei, former Chief White House correspondent at Politico, Mike Allen, and former Politico Chief Revenue Officer Roy Schwartz.

Funded by / Ownership

In the summer of 2016, Axios secured $10 million in financing led by Lerer Hippeau  [see also: BuzzFeed discussion]. Backers include media-partner NBC News; Laurene Powell Jobs (the widow of Steve Jobs)'s investment vehicle the Emerson Collective  [see also: The 19th  |  The Atlantic]; Greycroft Partners; and David Bradley and Katherine Bradley - owners of Atlantic Media. 2017-11, Axios said that it had raised an additional $20 million. WndrCo, a media-and-technology firm founded by DreamWorks Pictures CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, is a new investor in the round. Axios Media Group owns Axios.

Analysis / Bias

In review, Axios covers news and mostly American politics. There is minimal use of loaded language in headlines such as this: "Go deeper: How the NRA's spending shows the shifting midterms landscape." Further, all articles are well sourced to credible media outlets and/or quotes people making official statements. An analysis of news stories reveals that more favor the left through wording and volume of stories.

Failed Fact Checks

None in the Last 5 years.

News outlet Axios fired a reporter in Tampa, Florida, this week after he called a press release from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) administration "propaganda" in an email that Ron DeSantis officials posted online to smear the reporter.

In a reply to a press release about a Ron DeSantis event called "Exposing the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Scam in Higher Education" from the Florida Department of Education, reporter Ben Montgomery said, "This is propaganda, not a press release."

A screenshot of the email was posted on Twitter by Florida Education Department Communications Director   Alex Lanfranconi almost immediately after it was sent, as timestamps on the email and the tweet suggest.

Hours later, on Monday evening (2023-03-13), Ben Montgomery received a call from Axios local executive editor Jamie Stockwell, Ben Montgomery says, per The Washington Post. Jamie Stockwell reportedly asked Ben Montgomery to confirm that he had indeed sent the email before the outlet fired him, saying that Ben Montgomery's "reputation in the Tampa Bay area" was "irreparably tarnished."

Ron DeSantis' press release is available online and is full of thinly veiled racism, which is nothing new from the DeSantis administration, especially in its attacks on education and the teaching of Black history and LGBTQ topics.

The press release reads like a far-right screed, railing on "divisive concepts such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives" and critical race theory. The press release suggests, as Ron DeSantis has implied in his actions and essentially outright said, that diversity initiatives in higher education are discriminatory against white people, playing into the far-right's   white supremacist and completely fabricated conspiracy theories about the "Great Replacement" of white people in society by global elites.

"This sort of thing has a chilling effect. Nobody wants to have their life disrupted by this machine," Ben Montgomery said in an interview with Talking Points Memo. "They call it 'media accountability,' and it is not that. It's meaner than that, and more personal, and affecting. ... It has a quieting effect and that's a shame. It's sad for democracy, and sad for all of us."

Ben Montgomery's termination by Axios is a show of how supposedly "neutral" news outlets like Axioslegitimize and elevate fascists like Ron DeSantis as they plunge the U.S. further to the right. This is evidenced by how quickly Ben Montgomery was fired by Axios for a private communication, and by the fact that Axios would take such a drastic move against Ben Montgomery, whose "propaganda" comment was actually quite mild in describing Ron DeSantis and his war against civil rights and the free press.

Ron DeSantis and many other far-right politicians are highly aware of this weak spot in the corporate media, and openly take advantage of it in order to spread their propaganda. Donald Trump is a master in this art, and it has been deployed by other right-wing politicians like West Virginia Republican Governor Jim Justice, who recently pressured West Virginia Public Broadcasting into terminating a reporter over a story about disabled people being abused in West Virginia state facilities.

This sort of propagandizing, press complicity and political silencing is, in fact, a fixture of fascists throughout history; historians have documented the ways in which outlets like The New York Times   uplifted Adolf Hitler   during his rise to power, for instance - ultimately aiding Adolf Hitler in taking over as chancellor of Germany, and carrying out The Holocaust. Adolf Hitler - along with his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, whipped up support for The Holocaust through control of the media nationwide, including suppressing journalists who disagreed with Nazism.

Less than six years after launching its news site, Axios has struck a purchase deal with Cox Enterprises worth some $525 million, the two companies announced on Monday [2022-08-08]. The deal promises to meld two businesses that are distinctly different. Axios, the startup based in Arlington, Virginia is famous for its condensed, bullet-pointed stories. Cox Enterprises is a family-owned conglomerate headquartered in Atlanta that owns Autotrader,   Kelley Blue Book, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, along with substantial enterprises in broadband and other areas.

The two companies' leaders say they're united by a shared goal: boosting local journalism, at a time when the internet has laid waste to news outlets across the U.S. "We have found our kindred spirit for creating a great, trusted, consequential media company that can outlast us all," Axios CEO and co-founder Jim VandeHei said, in a statement posted by Cox. "Our shared ambitions should be clear: to spread clinical, nonpartisan, trusted journalism to as many cities and as many topics as fast as possible." "Local watchdog journalism is so important to the health of any community, and no one is more focused on building that out nationally than Axios," Cox chairman and CEO Alex Taylor said, in a separate announcement posted by Axios.

[ ... snip ... ]

Baltimore Sun

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources due to January 2024 purchase by notorious right-wing millionaire / Trumpist David D. Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group - a donor to far-right political messaging machines like 🛑 Project Veritas, and 🛑 Turning Point USA [main page]

David D. Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group (Sinclair), purchased the Baltimore Sun - the largest newspaper in Maryland - for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition means another powerful media outlet will be under the control of a wealthy conservative businessman with a history of using local media outlets to push an ideological agenda. Smith is the son of Sinclair founder Julian Sinclair Smith and, along with his brothers, controls the company. Sinclair, a publicly traded company, owns or operates 185 local television stations across 86 markets.

A 2018 study published in the American Political Science Review found that stations purchased by Sinclair "coverage of national politics at the expense of local politics" and undergo "a significant rightward shift in the ideological slant of coverage." Sinclair regularly requires its local affiliates to run segments pushing right-wing talking points. In 2018, Sinclair affiliates were required to have local anchors read a script warning views about "fake stories" being published by other media outlets "to push their own personal bias and agenda." The trend was described as "extremely dangerous to a democracy." The argument, which included no actual examples, matched then-president Donald Trump's rhetoric about the media. ...

[ ... snip ... ]

Sinclair stations were also required to run political commentary from Boris Epshteyn, who previously served as a Trump advisor and surrogate. Sinclair hired Epshteyn as its chief political analyst. Epshteyn's segments for Sinclair were mostly indistinguishable from his work for the Trump campaign. ...

[ ... snip ... ]

Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and advisor, said that in 2016, the Trump campaign provided Sinclair stations with extensive access to Trump in exchange for friendly coverage that did not include fact-checking. The history of using Sinclair-owned stations to push a right-wing agenda predates Trump. In 2004, "Sinclair ordered its stations to broadcast an hour-long documentary - preempting prime-time programming - titled Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal that blamed Democratic nominee John Kerry for the torture of American prisoners of war in Vietnam." ...

[ ... snip ... ]

Smith did not purchase the Baltimore Sun alone. He brought along one partner: Armstrong Williams, a right-wing pundit and operative. Williams has his own syndicated show on Sinclair stations. His social media accounts are full of incendiary statements about Democrats and liberals. ...

[ ... snip ... ]

Armstrong served as an advisor to former presidential candidate and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson. He claims to have paid for Justice Clarence Thomas' wedding reception. In 2005, Armstrong lost his syndicated column after it was revealed that he had been paid $240,000 by the George W. Bush administration to promote their signature education initiative, No Child Left Behind. FOLLOW THE MONEY. Smith has used his vast wealth to support a variety of far-right causes. The Baltimore Banner reports that since 2015, Smith, through his family foundation, has donated large sums to Young Americans for Liberty ($581,000), Project Veritas ($536,000), Turning Point USA ($150,000), and Moms for Liberty ($121,000). ...

[ ... snip ... ]

In 2022, Smith backed a successful ballot initiative to impose term limits on Baltimore's elected officials. Currently, Smith is "underwriting Renew Baltimore, a ballot drive to cap and lower the property tax rate." Now, Smith has a new tool in his arsenal to shape Baltimore's politics: the city's paper of record.

The Baltimore Sun's new owner doesn't seem to be on the same page as the paper's staff. David D. Smith, the chairman of the monopolistic, conservative, local media empire Sinclair Broadcast Group, scooped up Baltimore's hometown legacy paper last week for an unspecified, nine-figure dollar point - but his outsize ideas and a crude first impression might have just slapped a damper on the partnership from the get-go. During a contentious two-hour meet and greet with staff on Tuesday, Smith said he had read the daily paper - which has been a staple in the Baltimore market since its inception in 1837 - just four times, according to NPR's David Folkenflik. ...

[ ... snip ... ]

It's clear what Smith's aim is with his purchase of Maryland's largest daily newspaper. His TV empire's local Baltimore station has been keen on a series of coverage blaming the city's Black, Democratic mayor, Brandon Scott, for a flurry of local issues, including ongoing gun violence and education-related issues. And Smith's tax records, obtained by the Associated Press, paint a clearer picture of the multimillionaire's political affiliations, with donations to far-right political messaging machines like Project Veritas and Turning Point USA. Campaign contributions by the 73-year-old have also generally veered Republican for the last couple decades, according to a report by the Center for Public Integrity. ...

[ ... snip ... ]

Like most legacy papers around the nation, The Baltimore Sun has been gutted and gutted again by decades of cycling corporate ownership that have drained resources, cut salaries, and depleted staff for the sake of inflated executive bonuses. The Sun's last change of hands came in May 2021, when the hedge fund Alden Global Capital purchased Tribune Publishing for $633 million, snatching The Baltimore Sun and nearly 200 other local U.S. newspapers, including The New York Daily News and The Chicago Tribune, in the process.

David Smith, the longtime chairman of Sinclair Broadcasting Group who recently scooped up the Sun in an undisclosed nine-figure deal, has lived a salacious private life at odds with his conservative media empire. In August 1996, the Sun reported that Smith was caught by police in an undercover sting while receiving oral sex from a sex worker in a company-owned Mercedes. The Baltimore-based businessman was then detained overnight in the city's Central Booking Center. According to the paper, police said the sex worker broke off conversation with an undercover police officer when she saw "her regular date driving in the area." She then ran over to a 1992 Mercedes, registered to Sinclair, and got in on the passenger side. But that was just the one time Smith "got caught," according to one unidentified friend of the media mogul who spoke with GQ in 2005. ...

Bangor Daily News

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources due to historical right-wing bias towards conservatism and the Republican Party, and historical revisionism (e.g. Martin Luther King Jr.'s  I Have a Dream speech.

The Bangor Daily News is an American newspaper covering a large portion of central and eastern Maine, published six days per week in Bangor, Maine. The Bangor Daily News was founded on 1889-06-18; it merged with the Bangor Whig and Courier in 1900. Also known as the News or the BDN, the Bangor Daily News is published by the Bangor Publishing Company - a local family-owned company. The Bangor Daily News has been owned by the Towle-Warren family for four generations; current publisher Richard J. Warren is the great-grandson of J. Norman Towle, who bought the paper in 1895. Since 2018, the Bangor Daily News has been the only independently owned daily newspaper in Maine.

History

[ ... snip ... ]

In 2018, the Bangor Daily News became the state's only independently owned daily newspaper in Maine, after MaineToday Media, owned by Reade Brower, acquired additional newspapers in Maine. MaineToday now owns seven of Maine's eight daily newspapers:

• the Portland Press Herald,

• the Maine Sunday Telegram,

• the Times Record of Brunswick, Maine,

• the Journal Tribune of Biddeford, Maine,

• the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, Maine,

• the Morning Sentinel in Waterville, Maine, and

• the Coastal Journal in Bath, Maine.

Although Reade Brower's company does not own the Bangor Daily News, it does provide printing services for the Bangor Daily News.

As of 2020, about half of the Bangor Daily News's journalists were based in Bangor, with the other half spread across Maine.

In 2022-05, the newsroom staff unionized with the Maine NewsGuild, and won recognition from management.

[ ... snip ... ]

Editorial stance

The Bangor Daily News's editorial stance has traditionally leaned toward conservatism and the Republican Party  [Republican Party] - in contrast to the Portland Press Herald, which was regarded as having a more liberal, pro-Democratic  [Democratic Party] editorial stance. The Bangor Daily News historically endorsed Republican candidates for office, such as Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election - but has also sometimes endorsed Democratic candidates. In the 1974 Maine gubernatorial election, the Bangor Daily News endorsed independent candidate   James B. Longley: "The newspaper had always endorsed Republicans, so backing an independent was stunning." The endorsement was a major boost to James B. Longley's candidacy. The Bangor Daily News also backed independent candidate Herman "Buddy" Frankland, and Republican candidate Susan Collins.

The Bangor Daily News's editorial board endorsed Republican George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election, but endorsed Democrat John Kerry over George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. In 2008, the Bangor Daily News endorsed Democrat Barack Obama   for president, Republican Susan Collins for Senate, and Democrats Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree for Maine's congressional seats. The Bangor Daily News's editorial board endorsed Barack Obama for re-election in 2012 over Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

[ ... snip ... ]

Overall, we rate the Bangor Daily News Left-Center biased based on editorial positions that slightly favor the left and High for factual reporting.

Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  Country: USA  |  Press Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE  |  Media Type: Newspaper  |  Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY

History

Founded in 1889, the Bangor Daily News is an American newspaper covering a large portion of rural Maine, published six days per week in Bangor, Maine.

Funded by / Ownership

The Bangor Daily News is owned and published by the Bangor Publishing Company. The Bangor Daily News is the only independently owned daily newspaper in Maine. Funding comes through advertising and subscription fees.

Analysis / Bias

The Bangor Daily News publishes local news through journalists and national news through the republication of The Associated Press news. There is minimal use of loaded language, and all information is sourced properly. Editorially, the paper leans left and typically endorses Democratic Party candidates. Further, the Bangor Daily News has never failed a fact check. In general, the Bangor Daily News holds a left-leaning editorial bias and reports news factually.

Failed Fact Checks

None in the Last 5 years.

---

• This is the offending article: [BangorDailyNews.com, 2023-01-15] Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream  |  local copy

---

A Maine newspaper has apologized for publishing a heavily redacted version of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech  [Wikipedia: I Have a Dream] on Sunday (2023-01-15), after a deluge of backlash from readers, on social media, and even a cable news show host criticized the Bangor Daily News for whitewashing the Black civil rights leader's legacy on what would have been Martin Luther King Jr.'s 94th birthday.

The Bangor Daily News's editorial board has run the edited speech on and off since 2011. While some readers condemned the Bangor Daily News for omitting the parts of the speech that explicitly address the links between systemic racism  [institutional racism] and poverty, this is the first year the Bangor Daily News says it has been the target of such impassioned anger.

"For years, we have published the same editorial on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Typically, this abridged version of one of the great pieces of American oratory, Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 'I Have a Dream' speech, receives little fanfare. That was not the case this year," (2023-01-15) the editorial board of the Bangor Daily News said on Tuesday (2023-01-17).

After some introspection, and a conversation with an unnamed Portland, Maine city council member who expressed their own dismay, the board said it has seen the error of its ways. It explained that the Bangor Daily News often recycles editorials on holidays when readership tends to be low and that the entirety of Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech is simply too long to print in full. "The thinking has been that an abridged version was a way to honor Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy." The board continued: "It is clear that this institutional stagnation was a mistake on our part and that our thinking needs to be revisited, especially in light of recent ."

But the board did not offer an explanation as to why the original author or authors of the piece stripped the sections of the speech that directly addressed the violence of racial suppression and white supremacy at the time - sections that illustrate the radical and leftist views that made Martin Luther King Jr. such a controversial figure.

Among the parts that were excised over the last decade are roughly five paragraphs in which Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about America giving "the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.' "It also includes the section in which Martin Luther King Jr. touched on "the unspeakable horrors of police brutality," and the degrading Jim Crow laws of the South  [Southern United States], as well as the complicity of the North  [Northern United States].

In another edit, the board removed the phrase, "vicious racists" from the following sentence, and changed "down in Alabama" to "the state of Alabama":

"I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of 'interposition' and 'nullification' - one day right there in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

Martin Luther King Jr. was considered divisive in the 1960s

Historian and professor Kevin M. Kruse was among those who lambasted the Bangor Daily News for running the cut-down speech that he said presents a "sanitized and sterilized" version of the Black leader (Martin Luther King Jr.) - while the Bangor Daily News also prefaced it with a message calling on readers to "take a step away from our divisive politics and recall his defining speech." Kevin Kruse on Twitter posted an image of the Bangor Daily News's 1963 editorial about the march in Washington, D.C.  [March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963-08-28]. The editorial called for an end to all civil rights marches. Kevin Kruse noted that Martin Luther King Jr. was considered divisive at the time.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s own daughter - Bernice King - on Monday (2023-01-16) also tweeted about the controversy surrounding her father during his lifetime. "My father's 'dream' wasn't palpable to the white masses, including politicians," Bernice King wrote in a post. "He challenged militarism and sought to eradicate it. He worked to end poverty, as caused by extreme capitalism and materialism. We need to know the authentic King ... The Inconvenient King."

On Tuesday (2023-01-17) the Bangor Daily News's editorial board noted that during the summer of 2020 - when protests over the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer swept the nation   [Murder of George Floyd] - the Bangor Daily News "turned to Martin Luther King Jr.'s ' Letter from a Birmingham Jail'  [Wikipedia: Letter from Birmingham Jail] to help understand the protests and national debate after police murdered George Floyd in Minnesota, and to reflect on how little many things have changed in the last 60 years."

In revisiting Martin Luther King Jr.'s criticisms about white moderates and their "appalling silence", the editorial board of the Bangor Daily News acknowledged, "We also are literally white moderates, racially and often politically. But we don't want to be those white moderates Martin Luther King Jr. described, and we strive not to be when writing about racial inequality in Maine and across the country." The board ended the apology saying, "Today, for us, doing right means admitting we were wrong to simply reprint an old editorial, and pledging to continue our work of being a voice for equality, freedom and justice."

BBC

⚠️ CAUTION: potentially questionable content; carefully scrutinize authors and content for bias and truthfulness. Concerns include entrenched conservatism. As an example, the BBC, like The New York Times, irritatingly employs pronouns when referring to persons: Mr. * ; Mrs. *; ... - unilaterally enforcing binary gender assignment.

Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

Funded by / Ownership

The BBC operates under a Royal Charter, which is renewed every 10 years. The Royal Charter abolished the BBC Trust, and the regulatory functions of the BBC Trust were transferred to The Office of Communications or Ofcom in 2017. The operations of the BBC are governed by a board of directors consisting of thirteen people. Currently, the former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England David Clementi is the Chairman of the BBC, and Tony Hall is the Director-General of the BBC (Editor-in-Chief ). The BBC is financed by consumer license fees on broadcasting receivers (1947 Wireless and Telegraphy Act) which enables BBC's U.K. services to be free of advertisements and independent of shareholder and political interests.

Analysis

In review, both sides of the political spectrum have accused the BBC of either having a liberal or conservative bias. For example, an Evening Standard article based on an interview with a former BBC employee describes the BBC as a "Nest of Lefties promoting a progressive agenda and political correctness." According to a Times of London article, the BBC is biased against Israel; therefore, it has a left bias. The BBC states in their editorial guidelines that they are impartial and free from both political and commercial influence.

The BBC also has an Executive Complaints Unit in which the Daily Mail published an article regarding how the complaints unit works. The article states, "There was also a sharp increase in accusations of political bias and religious prejudice." The BBC then wrote a response to the Daily Mail article: "The Mail also said that the figures 'showed the level of dissatisfaction over issues such as left-wing bias, offensive content, and inaccuracy'. In fact, there is an extensive range of reasons why people complain. For example, we often get complaints of 'bias' about the same program from two or more opposing sides of the many issues we cover, not just 'left-wing'."

Bias

According to the New Statesman's research, examining the impartiality of the BBC's reporting shows that they lean right in certain areas, such as business, immigration, and religion. Examples of right bias include the BBC being accused of doctoring Jeremy Corbyn's image, who serves as Leader of the Labour Party (Corbyn identifies as a democratic socialist) wearing a Russian-style cap in front of a Moscow skyline to make him look more Russian. BBC rejected the complaints by claiming the decision to publish Corbyn in a "Lenin-style cap in front of the Moscow skyline was not designed to convey an impression of pro-Russian sympathy on Corbyn's part but was in keeping; with an editorial decision made based on sound news judgment."

A 2014 Pew Research Survey found that 60% of BBC's audience is consistently or mostly liberal, 26% Mixed, and 13% consistently or mostly conservative. This indicates that a more liberal audience prefers BBC News.

When reporting general news, the BBC always sources its information and uses minimal loaded words in headlines such as this: "Trump chief of staff John Kelly to leave White House job." When it comes to reporting on the USA and, in particular, former President Donald Trump, there is a negative tone directed at Trump and his policies. In general, the BBC covers both sides of stories, with a slight bias in favor of the left.

Failed Fact Checks

A group of puppies transported more than 100 miles died with COVID-19. - False (Corrected).

Bloomberg News

⚠️ CAUTION: potentially questionable content; carefully scrutinize authors and content for bias and truthfulness. Concerns include ownership of influential news /mass media by multibillionaires: The Washington Post is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos.

Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER  |  Factual Reporting: MOSTLY FACTUAL  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

Bloomberg or Bloomberg News was founded in 1981 by businessman and the former three-term (2002-2013) mayor of New York City, Michael R. Bloomberg. It is a business-focused news organization headquartered in New York City. Bloomberg News is a division of Bloomberg L.P., including a global television network (Bloomberg Television), digital websites, radio stations (Bloomberg Radio), subscription-only newsletters, and three magazines: Bloomberg Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Bloomberg Markets.

Bloomberg News delivers business and markets news, data, and analysis to its readers. Further, they also have a section under politics called "Trump Tracker," which tracks the latest news and reports on Donald Trump. Former editor of The Economist,   John Micklethwait is the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News since 2015. Michael R. Bloomberg is the President & CEO.

On November 24, 2019, majority owner Michael Bloomberg announced he is running for President of the United States as a Democratic Party Candidate. We will monitor Bloomberg News for changes in reporting and editorial bias based on this decision. Further, they announced they would not cover Michael Bloomberg or his Democratic rivals because the primary Bloomberg News will not investigate Mike Bloomberg or his Democratic rivals during the primary.

Funded by / Ownership

Michael R. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP (the parent company of Bloomberg News). According to Investopedia, Bloomberg Terminal (remote software used to access financial information) is the most expensive among financial data providers. Bloomberg News started to charge visitors for its content with a metered paywall in 2018, limiting users to view 10 articles per month and 30 minutes of Bloomberg TV Livestream daily. After 10 articles, readers have to become digital subscribers to have full access.

Analysis / Bias

Michael R. Bloomberg Philanthropies' five focus areas are public health, arts and culture, the environment, education, and government innovation. As a philanthropist, Michael Bloomberg has given over $3.3 billion in support of education, public health, government innovation, the arts, and the environment. Michael R. Bloomberg is the president of the C40 Climate Leadership Group. Further, Michael R. Bloomberg endorsed Hillary Clinton for the 2020 United States presidential election.

In review, Bloomberg News publishes stories with moderately loaded emotional headlines such as this editorial: ...

Failed Fact Checks

None to date.

Boston Globe, The

Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH.  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

Founded in 1872, The Boston Globe is an American daily broadsheet newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been awarded 23 Pulitzer Prizes since 1966. The current editor is Brain McGrory. The Boston Globe is one of the largest newspapers in the USA.

Funded by / Ownership

The Boston Globe is owned by Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC and is funded through a subscription and advertising model.

Analysis / Bias

In review, The Boston Globe covers local news via journalists in the greater Boston area. The national news is also derived from journalists and republished from other sources such as the The Associated Press. There is minimal use of loaded language in headlines such as this: "Trump says he will end birthright citizenship via executive order." Editorially, The Boston Globe favors the left in both story selection and consistent Democratic Party candidate endorsements.

Failed Fact Checks

• Climate projections using models based on it [the water vapor feedback] have consistently failed - UNSUPPORTED

Breitbart  |  Breitbart News

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources: founded by Andrew Breitbart (Founder of Breitbart News: note association with Steve Bannon), ...

• Wikipedia: Breitbart News.
• Note also close association with Steve Bannon.

• Andrew Breitbart also founded HuffPost (The Huffington Post).

QUESTIONABLE SOURCE. A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda / conspiracies, poor or no sourcing to credible information, a complete lack of transparency, and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for profit or influence (Learn More). Sources listed in the Questionable Category may be very untrustworthy and should be fact-checked on a per-article basis. Please note sources on this list are not considered fake news unless specifically written in the reasoning section for that source.

Reasoning: Extreme Right, Propaganda, Conspiracy, Failed Fact Checks  |  Bias Rating: RIGHT  |  Factual Reporting: MIXED  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY.

History

Breitbart News is a conservative news and opinion website founded in 2007 by Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012). Andrew Breitbart was a conservative commentator and entrepreneur, "a former liberal from Los Angeles who became a conservative," wrote Jonah Engel Bromwich of The New York Times. Breitbart News, under Andrew Breitbart's leadership, generated news coverage that was praised by the right for its populist, anti-establishment voice on the left; however, Breitbart was also accused of being a provocateur and misleading. Andrew Breitbart also co-founded the Huffington Post.

After Andrew Breitbart died in 2012, a former investment banker for Goldman Sachs,   Steve Bannon became the Breitbart executive chairman. Under Bannon, the website became more nationalist and a vocal outlet of the alt-rightalt-right movement. According to Sarah Posner from Mother JonesSteve Bannon, he described Breitbart News as "a platform to the alt-right." Steve Bannon - who was chief executive of the Trump campaign, and then-White House chief strategist for the Trump administration for seven months before returning to Breitbart News - had stepped down from his position at Breitbart in 2018.

Larry Solov is the co-founder and CEO of Breitbart News, and Alex Marlow serves as editor-in-chief.

In 2018-10, Breitbart was banned as a reliable source in Wikipedia. However, Breitbart was added as a reliable news source to Facebook's new news initiative. This decision was met with harsh criticism by several media outlets, including Media Bias Fact Check.

On 2020-07-27, America's Frontline Doctors released a video claiming that hydroxychloroquine   cures COVID-19 and that masks are unnecessary. Conservative news outlet Breitbart published a story and their video that went viral, reaching millions. On 2020-07-28 Facebook,   Twitter, and YouTube removed the video due to the "doctors making false and dubious claims related to the coronavirus."

Funded by / Ownership

After the death of Andrew Breitbart in 2012, Larry Solov became CEO and president of Breitbart News. In 2017, according to Politico, Larry Solov revealed the owner of Breitbart as "himself, founder Andrew Breitbart's widow Susie Breitbart, and the Republican Party mega-donor the Mercer family." Further, Larry Solov also stated that he wants "to disclose as little as possible about financial and ownership structure."

Analysis / Bias

Breitbart consists of various sections called Big Government, Big Journalism, Big Hollywood, National Security, Tech, Sports, and Wired.

Breitbart< uses sensational, emotionally loaded language in their headlines, such as "Obama Loses 2 Million+ Followers During Twitter Fake Account Purge." They utilize sources such as tabloid entertainment magazine Variety, and credible sources such as Bloomberg News, and factually mixed sources such as the Daily Mail. Under the Big Hollywood section, they publish tabloid stories such as "Fashion Notes: Melania Trump is Posh and Proper for Final Day in England" utilizing fashion sources such as Farfetch.com.

A 2014 Pew Research Survey found that 7% of Breitbart's audience is consistently or mostly liberal, 14% Mixed, and 79% consistently or mostly conservative. This indicates that a more conservative audience heavily prefers Breitbart.

In general, most published stories favor the right and are highly pro-Donald Trump in tone and story selection. Many stories also promote anti-science propaganda as it pertains to climate change denial, and COVID-19 mask effectiveness.

Failed Fact Checks

Breitbart News / Breitbart has numerous failed fact checks - refer to the MediaBiasFactCheck.com entry.

Insider  |  Business Insider

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources, including:

Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

Launched in 2007, Business Insider is a business news site concentrating on finance, industry, and tech news. Its headquarters is located in New York City, USA. Business Insider was founded by former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget and DoubleClick's co-founder Dwight Merriman and CEO Kevin Ryan. It is published by Insider, Inc.  Business Insider's board of directors includes The Huffington Post co-founder Kenneth "Ken" Lerer, and the president and chief operating officer are Julie Hansen. Henry Blodget is also CEO and editor-in-chief of Business Insider.

Funded by / Ownership

In 2015, German publishing company Axel Springer - owner of Bild,  Die Welt, and Fakt - acquired Business Insider for $442 million, which brought their share to approximately 97 percent. Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment company of Jeff Bezos, will hold further shares according to the purchase details. The website is funded through online advertising.

• Harvard University: The Future of Media Project:  Index of US Mainstream Media Ownership (2021-11-30).

[19] Business Insider. Top owner / investor: Axel Springer SE, majority owned by KKR & Co. Inc. (Henry R. Kravis, George R. Roberts, Jerome Kohlberg Jr. Private Equity). Axel Springer SE is a German digital publishing house which is the largest in Europe, with numerous multimedia news brands. KKR owns 45% and has a majority control. Ownership: Private For Profit. Reach: 100k subscribers (2020, WSJ), 107.32M on average monthly uniques (SimilarWeb 2021). Comscore reports monthly uniques for Feb. 2021 are 95,340,000. Estimated Monthly readers: 95,340,000.

• Wikipedia entry, 2021-11-30.

Business Insider is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in Business Insider's parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German publishing house Axel Springer SE. In 2021-02, Business Insider Inc.  was renamed  Insider.

Insider's current CEO is Henry Blodget, who was censured and permanently barred from the securities industry in 2003 following an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission,  NASD  [now: Financial Industry Regulatory Authority] and the New York Stock Exchange.

After Business Insider was purchased by Axel Springer SE in 2015, a substantial portion of its staff left the company. According to a CNN report, some staff who exited complained that "traffic took precedence over enterprise reporting". In 2018, staff members were asked to sign a confidentiality agreement that included a nondisparagement clause requiring them not to criticize the site during or after their employment.

Bias, Reliability, and Editorial Policy

In 2010, Business Insider falsely reported that New York Governor David Paterson was slated to resign, which multiple news sources had also reported; Business Insider had earlier reported a false story alleging that Steve Jobs experienced a heart attack, which was based on the citizen-journalism site iReport. The story was updated 25 minutes after being published, after learning that it was false.

In April 2011, Henry Blodget sent out a notice inviting publicists to "contribute directly" to Business Insider. As of September, Business Insider allowed the use of anonymous sources "at any time for any reason". According to the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, Business Insider gave SAP "limited editorial control" over the content of its "Future of Business" section as of 2013. The website publishes a mix of original reporting and aggregation of other outlets' content. Business Insider has also published native advertising  [Aside: BuzzFeed's business model also relies primarily on native advertising.]

[Source for the preceding paragraphs: Wikipedia, 2021-11-30.]

Native Advertising

Native advertising, also called sponsored content, is a type of advertising that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. In many cases it functions like an advertorial, and manifests as a video, article or editorial. The word native refers to this coherence of the content with the other media that appear on the platform.

These ads reduce a consumers' ad recognition by blending the advertising into the native content of the platform, even if it is labeled as "sponsored" or "branded" content. Readers may have difficulty immediately identifying them as advertisements due to their ambiguous nature, especially when deceptive labels such as "From around the web" are used.

Product placement (embedded marketing) is a precursor to native advertising. The former places the product within the content, whereas in native marketing, which is legally permissible in the US to the extent that there is sufficient disclosure, the product and content are merged.

[Source for the preceding paragraph: Wikipedia, 2021-11-30.]

Reception

... Business Insider has faced criticism for what critics consider its clickbait-style headlines. A 2013 profile of Henry Blodget and Business Insider in The New Yorker suggested that Business Insider - because it republishes material from other outlets - may not always be accurate.

[Source for the preceding paragraph: Wikipedia, 2021-11-30.]

Failed Fact Checks

Amazon Doesn't Produce 20% of Earth's Oxygen - FALSE.

Bulwark, The

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources. Concerns include a strong right-wing bias [masquerading as left-wing politics], and staffing from the defunct The Weekly Standard. [The Weekly Standard was an American neoconservative political magazine originally edited by founders Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, which was described as a "redoubt of neoconservatism" and as "the neocon bible."] "In general, this is a moderate right-leaning source that does not support Donald Trump"

See also:

• The Weekly Standard

The Bulwark is an American center-right news and opinion website launched in 2018 by Sarah Longwell, with the support of Bill Kristol and Charlie Sykes. The Bulwark initially launched as a news aggregator, but it was revamped into a news and opinion site using key staffers from the recently closed The Weekly Standard  [🛑 The Weekly Standard].

History

Following the end of publication of The Weekly Standard  [🛑 The Weekly Standard] in 2018-12, editor-in-chief Charlie Sykes said: "the murder of The Weekly Standard made it urgently necessary to create a home for rational, principled, fact-based center-right voices who were not cowed by Trumpism." The site was created in December 2018 as a news aggregator as a project of the Defending Democracy Together, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit conservative advocacy group led in part by The Weekly Standard co-founder William Kristol. Several former editors and writers of The Weekly Standard soon joined the staff and within weeks of launch began publishing original news and opinion pieces. The website has frequently published pieces critical of Donald Trump and pro-Trump elites in politics and the media.

[ ... snip ... ]

As a non-profit project, The Bulwark does not run advertising, and is supported by donations. By 2019-01, approximately $1 million had already been raised for the site, which was said to be adequate to keep the site running for one year. In 2021, The Bulwark launched Bulwark+, a program that provides paid subscribers with "exclusive podcasts, newsletters, and live-streams" for about $100 a year; within a few months, the website reported roughly 16,000 subscribers.

In 2021, Washingtonian magazine noted that content on The Bulwark is primarily geared toward readers seeking "serious coverage of events through a center-right filter" but that its editors have sought to attract centrist Democratic readers who may be "uncomfortable with the excesses of the progressive left."

Staff

The co-founder of The Bulwark is Charlie Sykes who also serves as editor-at-large along with William Kristol. With Sarah Longwell serving as publisher, the staff also include editors Jonathan V. Last, Adam Keiper, Jim Swift, Martyn Wendell Jones, Benjamin Parker, Sonny Bunch, and Mona Charen. Writers include Theodore R. Johnson, William Saletan, Cathy Young, Tim Miller, and Amanda Carpenter.

[ ... snip ... ]

Sarah Longwell is a Republican political strategist and publisher of the neoconservative news and opinion website The Bulwark. Sara Longwell is the founder of Republican Voters Against Trump (now the Republican Accountability Project), which spent millions of dollars to defeat President Donald Trump in 2020. According to The New Yorker  [The New Yorker], Sarah Longwell has "dedicated her career to fighting Donald Trump's takeover of her Republican Party."

Career

[ ... snip ... ]

Sarah Longwell also became the first female national board chair of the Log Cabin Republicans. Sarah Longwell was instrumental in persuading the Log Cabin Republicans to refrain from endorsing then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016. In 2019, the Log Cabin Republicans endorsed President Donald Trump/mnt/Vancouver/domains/persagen/public/docs for re-election, and Sarah Longwell resigned as board chair.

That same year, Sarah Longwell left Berman and Company to start her own communications firm - Longwell Partners, headquartered in Washington, D.C. Sarah Longwell also became publisher of The Bulwark - a conservative website that opposes President Donald Trump's agenda - bringing together a moderate coalition of traditional conservatives and libertarians.

Sarah Longwell is a prominent voice in the Never Trump movement. Sarah Longwell was instrumental in founding Defending Democracy Together, an umbrella organization for Republican Voters Against Trump,   Republicans for the Rule of Law, and other anti-Trump projects. Sarah Longwell advocated for the impeachment and removal of President Trump in 2019, and for Donald Trump's impeachment and conviction in 2021.

Defending Democracy Together

In 2017, Sarah Longwell was invited to participate in a session of the "Meeting of the Concerned," a quasi-secret group of Republicans who were unhappy with the direction their party had taken, where she met Bill Kristol. After the firing of FBI Director James Comey - which triggered the Mueller investigation - Bill Kristol and Sarah Longwell formed Republicans for the Rule of Law. In 2018, Sarah Longwell launched a nonprofit organization in response to President Donald Trump's attacks on Robert Mueller. The group, Defending Democracy Together, was the umbrella organization for Republicans for the Rule of Law.

During the 2020 election, Defending Democracy Together also served as the umbrella organization for Republican Voters Against Trump, which collected testimonials from former Donald Trump supporters and other Republicans who opposed the Trump presidency. The group spent more than $35 million to oppose President Trump, promoting those testimonials via social media advertising, billboard campaigns, and other tactics in key battleground states. In Sarah Longwell's words: "People want to be counted, people want to be on the record saying they, in this moment, stood up against Trump".

After Donald Trump's defeat in the 2020 election, Republican Voters Against Trump rebranded itself as the Republican Accountability Project, targeting Republicans who spread falsehoods about the integrity of the election. In 2021-01, the group launched a $1 million billboard campaign, calling on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), and others to resign for continuing to support Trump in the lead-up to the January 6th Capitol riots. As Sarah Longwell put it, "The goal is to not allow these officials to memory-hole the fact that they pushed this lie, which incited the attack on the Capitol."

The Bulwark

In 2018, Sarah Longwell launched The Bulwark, a neoconservative opinion website, with the help of Kristol and conservative radio host Charlie Sykes. Initially launching as a news aggregator with anti-Trump content, the website revamped into a news and opinion destination, using digital staffers from the now-defunct The Weekly Standard. By 2019, The Bulwark had raised about $1 million to establish a "rational, non-Trumpist forum".

As publisher of The Bulwark, Sarah Longwell often guest-writes columns for the website, analyzing political news of the day and pushing back against the pro-Trump movement. In 2021-02, Sarah Longwell lamented the role of certain Republicans in the Capitol riots  [Washington, D.C., 2021-01-06], urging Americans to "never forget who the enemies of democracy were". Sarah Longwell supports "principled conservatism", claiming "hope is not lost, people are mostly good (regardless of who they vote for), and that America is going to be okay".

Sarah Longwell also co-hosts The Secret Podcast with Jonathan V. Last and The Next Level Podcast with Jonathan V. Last and Tim Miller.

[ ... snip ... ]

• Bias Rating: RIGHT-CENTER  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  Country: USA (44/180 Press Freedom)  |  Media Type: Website  |  Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY

History

Founded in 2018 by Charlie Sykes and Bill Kristol, The Bulwark is a news and opinion website featuring many staff from the now-defunct right-leaning The Weekly Standard  [🛑 The Weekly Standard]. The Weekly Standard editor-in-chief Charlie Sykes said, "the murder of the Standard made it urgently necessary to create a home for rational, principled, fact-based center-right voices who Trumpism did not cow."

Funded by / Ownership

The Bulwark is a Defending Democracy Together project, a 501(c)(3) conservative advocacy group led in part by The Weekly Standard co-founder William Kristol. The Bulwark and its parent company Defending Democracy Together Institute, is funded through donations. According to the right-leaning InfluenceWatch.org, Defending Democracy Together is a right-center advocacy organization primarily funded by the left-center "Hewitt Foundation" [←  sic; likely refers to: the Hewlett Foundation] that is described as a "nonprofit dedicated to incubating and assembling pro-democracy voices. . . created by conservatives uncomfortable with the flamboyant rhetoric that can come from President Donald Trump."

Analysis / Bias

In review, The Bulwark has essentially started where The Weekly Standard left off - as a conservative publisher who did not support former President Donald Trump. Do not confuse The Bulwark as a left-biased source: The Bulwark is a right-leaning source the rejects most progressive and mainstream democratic ideals. For example, The Bulwark uses moderately loaded words that denigrate Hillary Clinton: "If Hillary Clinton Doesn't Shut Up, She'll Re-Elect Trump." Despite the loaded headline, this story is properly sourced to Know Your Meme, and The Washington Post. Besides original reporting, The Bulwark website also features a news aggregator that sources a variety of left, least biased, and right-leaning sources. In general, this is a moderate right-leaning source that does not support Donald Trump. It might not be The Weekly Standard 2.0, but it is pretty close and a credible source for right-leaning information.

Failed Fact Checks

None in the Last 5 years

BuzzFeed (web)  |  BuzzFeed News (investigative reporting)

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources. Concerns include the following items (chiefly: news aggregation rather than investigative journalism; preoccupation with wealth, growth and acquisition; focus on digital arts and trending / viral content; questionable business practices (staff terminations; anti-union stance; native advertising; ...); associations with known disinformationists; self-promotion; promotion of consumerism; ...

Ownership { Jonah H. Peretti  |  John Seward Johnson III } and Associations

• Founders Jonah H. Peretti and John Seward Johnson III are entrepreneurs involved in creating and promoting digital arts projects.

• For example, Eyebeam is a not-for-profit art and technology center in New York City, founded in 1998 by filmmaker / philanthropist John Seward Johnson III, with co-founders David S. Johnson and Roderic R. Richardson. Originally conceived as a digital effects and coding atelier and center for youth education, Eyebeam has become a center for the research, development, and curation of new media works of art and open source technology.

• In 2003, John Seward Johnson III hired Jonah H. Peretti as Director of Research and Development at Eyebeam, with the purpose of establishing the web as a place for art experiments.

• Circa 2004 Fundrace.org (a site which allows visitors to track campaign contributions through geocoding) was developed by Jonah Peretti, then-director of Research and Development at Eyebeam - later adapted into a permanent feature on The Huffington Post.

• Jonah H. Peretti is an internet entrepreneur, a co-founder and the CEO of BuzzFeed, co-founder of The Huffington Post, and developer of reblogging under the project "Reblog."

• In 2005 Jonah Peretti co-founded The Huffington Post - a news aggregator and blog - along with Kenneth Lerer,   Andrew Breitbart and Arianna Huffington in 2005. Jonah Peretti left The Huffington Post in 2011 after it was bought by AOL for $315 million.

• The Huffington Post cofounder Andrew Breitbart was the founder of the notorious disinformation source Breitbart News - notably associated with the notorious disinformationist Steve Bannon. Andrew Breitbart conceived of Breitbart News as "the Huffington Post of the right."

• Commenters such as Nick Gillespie and Conor Friedersdorf have credited Andrew Breitbart with changing how people wrote about politics by "showing how the internet could be used to route around information bottlenecks imposed by official spokesmen and legacy news outlets".

• Andrew Breitbart was a Lincoln Fellow at The Claremont Institute - a conservative American think tank - in 2009.

• The conservative National Review said in 2020 that "Claremont stands out for beclowning itself with this embrace of the smarmy underside of American politics," although it noted that "many conservative institutions and individuals have adjusted their standards and long-proclaimed principles to accommodate Trump and Trumpism."

• Slate Magazine in 2020 called The Claremont Institute "a racist fever swamp with deep connections to the conspiratorial alt-right," citing as examples a 2019 fellowship granted by Claremont to Pizzagate conspiracy theory enthusiast Jack Posobiec. and the publication of a 2020 "birther" essay by The Claremont Institute Senior Fellow John C. Eastman  [local copy].

• The Claremont Institute was an early defender of then-candidate Donald Trump; The Daily Beast stated The Claremont Institute has "arguably has done more than any other group to build a philosophical case for Trump's brand of conservatism."

• In 2006, John Seward Johnson III co-founded the website BuzzFeed with entrepreneur Jonah H. Peretti. BuzzFeed is an online media company that detects and accelerates traction of trending news and entertainment. It was initially conceived of as a media analytics company to track viral content. BuzzFeed has grown into a global media and technology company, providing coverage on a variety of topics including politics, do-it-yourself, animals, and business.

• BuzzFeed's business model relies primarily on native advertising in the form of quizzes and videos sponsored by companies, which also goes by the name sponsored content or advertorial - which is advertising content that looks like an editorial. Native advertising is a strategy that helps with increasing the likelihood of viewers read through the content of advertisements. BuzzFeed News also solicits membership fees.

• The statement "BuzzFeed News is completely different from their parent site [BuzzFeed], which generally produces clickbait-type stores shared on Social Media." raises concern over the independence of the two entities (BuzzFeed: social media; BuzzFeed News: original investigative reporting. [In 2016, BuzzFeed split the news operation off from the BuzzFeed Entertainment Group.]

• Despite BuzzFeed's entrance into serious journalism, a 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that in the United States, BuzzFeed was viewed as an unreliable source by the majority of respondents, regardless of age or political affiliation.

• On 2019-01-23, BuzzFeed notified all employees via memo that there would be an upcoming 15% reduction in workforce affecting the international, web content, and news divisions of the company. The layoffs would affect approximately 200 employees. In 2020 BuzzFeed signed a deal with Universal Television to produce content based on its stories.

• On 2020-11-19 BuzzFeed Inc. acquired the The Huffington Post from Verizon Media [2017+: Yahoo], making Verizon Media / Yahoo a minority stakeholder in BuzzFeed.

• On 2021-03-09 the CEO of BuzzFeed, Jonah Peretti, said that the company had lost "around $20 million" during the previous year [2020]. The same day, it was announced that HuffPost Canada would be shut down, and immediately ceased publishing. BuzzFeed laid off 47 HuffPost staff in the U.S. (mostly journalists) and closed down HuffPost Canada, laying off 23 staff working for the Canadian and Quebec divisions of the company.

• In 2021 at a virtual company meeting, Jonah Peretti - as BuzzFeed's chief executive officer - fired 47 employees at The Huffington Post in a controversial manner, sending a virtual meeting password "spr!ngisH3r3" to laid-off employees.

• HuffPost has been criticized for providing a platform for alternative medicine and supporters of vaccine hesitancy.

• In June 2021, BuzzFeed announced its plans to go public via a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) and planned to acquire Complex Networks.

• [LATimes.com, 2021-12-02] As BuzzFeed nears SPAC deal, news employees stage walkout.

BuzzFeed News employees on Thursday [2021-12-02] walked off the job as the company plans to trade on the stock market. The union said 61 employees participated in the 24-hour walkout to push for better wages and working conditions at the digital media company. Several are based in Los Angeles. The union said its employer is offering only a 1% annual guaranteed raise and a minimum salary floor of $50,000, which the guild believes is too low for people living in such cities as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. The walkout is intended to "send a reminder that there's no BuzzFeed News without us as we fight for our first collective bargaining agreement," the union said on Twitter. The group, which is part of the News Guild of New York, said it has been bargaining for a contract for nearly two years. BuzzFeed News workers who participated in the walkout represent about 6% of the company's total employees.

The protest came on the same day [2021-12-02] as a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), 890 Fifth Avenue Partners Inc., is set to vote on a merger with BuzzFeed. The deal announced earlier this year is expected to close in the fourth quarter, giving BuzzFeed a valuation of $1.5 billion. Some investors are pulling out their money in the SPAC, reducing BuzzFeed's cash proceeds, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday [2021-12-02].

BuzzFeed, a New York-based news and entertainment media company, said it employs 1,100 workers and will grow to 1,400 employees next week after it acquires Complex Networks  [Complex Networks], a youth network that features fashion, food, music and sports content, in a $300-million deal.

[ ... snip ... ]

• Sources (all via Wikipedia) for the statements above:

• BuzzFeed

• Eyebeam

• HuffPost  (The Huffington Post)

• Andrew James Breitbart

• John Seward Johnson III

• Jonah H. Peretti

BuzzFeed - Recent News

• [Vox.com, 2021-12-06] BuzzFeed's a public company. Now what?  The fate of BuzzFeed is going to determine the fortunes of a lot of other companies.

The transformation from startup to public company is supposed to be a very big deal. So let's start by acknowledging that BuzzFeed, which started 15 years ago as an internet experiment, has hit a milestone: 2021-12-06 is the day you will be able to buy and sell shares of BZFD on the Nasdaq.

We can also acknowledge that BuzzFeed's transformation has been much rockier than it would have liked. Last week, when it formally morphed from a private company into a public one (using a "SPAC" [Special-purpose acquisition company] - a bit of financial engineering that was very popular a year ago and has now fallen out of favor), investors gave the company a thumbs down. That meant it only raised $16 million instead of the $250 million it had hoped to raise earlier this year. On top of that, 61 of the employees in its BuzzFeed News operation - about 5 percent of the company's overall workforce - walked off the job last Thursday [2021-12-02] to protest the state of their negotiations for a union contract.

But step back a bit further. The fact that BuzzFeed is around at all - let alone publicly traded, with all of the financial transparency and investor expectations that come with that - is worth noting.

BuzzFeed is perhaps the best-known member of a cohort of digital publishers that launched in the last decade, and for a time looked like they might usurp conventional media companies. Their ascent freaked out incumbent publishers, and briefly convinced investors to throw billions of dollars their way.

Then their main strategy - latch on to Facebook, and profit when the social network put their stuff in front of a gazillion eyeballs - collapsed about four years ago when it became clear that Facebook was more competitor than partner. And then many of them shrank   dramatically or disappeared altogether.

So the fact that BuzzFeed is still around, and big enough to plausibly exist as a public company, is ... something.

It's not nearly as sexy a story as it was six or seven years ago, when BuzzFeed's existence - along with other publishers like The Huffington Post and my employer, Vox Media - worried The New York Times enough that the paper created a what-do-we-do-now internal report dedicated to fending off the insurgents. Or when BuzzFeed seemed to have such deep insight into digital culture that Ben Smith, then its editor-in-chief, could boast that "the world has moved toward us." Or when it was telling the world that it was going to take what it had learned making viral content and use those insights to upend Hollywood.

Flash-forward to now, and BuzzFeed's ambitions are considerably scaled back: Like everyone else in media, it is trying to sell projects to studios and streamers that need content. But the idea of a BuzzFeed Motion Pictures unit seems like a stretch, which seems to be why the company no longer has a unit called that anymore. The New York Times, it turns out, didn't really need to copy the viral content strategy that BuzzFeed helped pioneer. Instead, it has flourished by producing excellent journalism and asking its readers to pay for it, which they seem happy to do. And it's been able to use that money to hire stars from digital competitors like Vox and BuzzFeed. Including Ben Smith.

A more concrete way of putting it: As of last week, BuzzFeed was valued at $1.5 billion - less than the $1.7 billion investors thought it was worth back in 2016, even though it has since acquired both HuffPost and Complex Networks, both big publishers in their own right.

Or, another, more practical way of underlining BuzzFeed's reined-in expectations: For years, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said he was fine with the fact that his BuzzFeed News unit was a money-loser because it did important work that he was happy to subsidize. But that has changed in recent years. In 2019, BuzzFeed had major layoffs in that group for the first time, and now Jonah Peretti says he wants BuzzFeed News to lose less money. Hence contract negotiations that have run more than two years.

[ ... snip ... ]

• [CNN.com, 2023-01-26] BuzzFeed says it will use AI to help create content, stock jumps 150%.  |  discussion: Hacker News: 2023-01-27  |  COMMENT (2023-01-27): BuzzFeed is already red-flagged / excluded as a source of information on Persagen.com.

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Potential BuzzFeed - Vox Media Connections (Ken Lerer, son Ben Lerer, ...)

Background

• Group Nine Media, Inc. was founded 2016-10 by Ben Lerer  [cited / main article], the son of Kenneth "Ken" Lerer. Group Nine Media is an American digital media   holding company based in New York City. In 2020-12, Group Nine formed its own corporate special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to use the public funding for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination.

---

• At the beginning of 2021, Group Nine created a blank-check SPAC company - the same mechanism BuzzFeed used to go public and buy Complex Networks. Monday [2021-12-13]'s news seems to be an admission that Group Nine couldn't find a company it wanted to buy, or that wanted to be acquired. (Group Nine's ownership stake in that SPAC will transfer over to Vox Media.)

• As mentioned above, in 2005 Jonah Peretti and Ken Lerer co-founded The Huffington Post.

• At the time of the 2016 merger of Group Nine holdings, Discovery Communications  [Discovery Channel, etc.] announced a $100 million minority investment in the collective organization, becoming the biggest shareholder before Axel Springer.

• Relevant to this file (Persagen.com sources), Axel Springer acquired Business Insider in 2015, and Politico in 2021-10.

• According to the Wall Street Journal, the combined company [Vox Media - Group Nine] is expected to generate more than $700 million in revenue in 2022 and more than $100 million in profit, making it one of the biggest players in the sector. "The business rationale behind this merger is to grow revenue, increase scale, and combine these incredibly powerful and complementary portfolios," said Vox Mediaco-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer James Philip Bankoff.

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Lerer Hippeau

• Kenneth Lerer is a Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau. Kenneth Lerer cofounded The Huffington Post and was the longtime Chairman of BuzzFeed. Ken Lerer serves as the Chairman of Blade  [BLADE Urban Air Mobility, Inc. jet aircraft service], and sits on the Board of Directors of Group Nine Media, Inc.. Kenneth Lerer is also on the Board of nonprofits Bank Street College of Education, and the Association to Benefit Children  [ex officio member].  |  local copy

• Ben Lerer is a Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau and the CEO of Group Nine Media, Inc., a digital media holding company consisting of Thrillist,   NowThis News,   The Dodo,   Seeker, and PopSugar Inc.. Ben Lerer is the cofounder and former CEO of Thrillist. Ben Lerer chairs the Board of Directors for Urban Upbound, and is an Associate Member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS). Ben Lerer sits on the Board of Directors for Casper Sleep Inc.  [Wikipedia: Casper Sleep Inc.], and the Board of RaisedByUs  [RaisedBy.Us].  |  local copy

• Eric Hippeau is a Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau. Previously, Eric Hippeau was the CEO of The Huffington Post, in which he had invested as a Managing Partner at Softbank Capital. Eric Hippeau has also served as Chairman and CEO of Ziff-Davis, Inc., former top publisher of computer magazines. Eric Hippeau sits on the board of BuzzFeed, a portfolio company, and Marriott International. Eric Hippeau was educated at the Sorbonne University in Paris,   France.

   |  local copy

• [ ... snip ... ]

---

• [Vox.com, 2021-12-13] Why is Vox Media buying Group Nine?  The Vox Media-Group Nine deal - and all the other digital media deals - explained.

Two weeks, two deals. And now four digital media companies are turning into two. Get ready for more of that. That's the takeaway from Monday [2021-12-13]'s news that Vox Media - my [Peter Kafka's] employer - is close to acquiring Group Nine, the publisher behind outlets like The Dodo and NowThis News. That deal announcement, first reported in the Wall Street Journal and then confirmed via a companywide email shortly after, comes days after BuzzFeed finished up buying Complex Networks, the publisher aimed at dudes who like hip-hop and sneakers.

The BuzzFeed - Complex Group deal came as BuzzFeed went public, a move its CEO Jonah Peretti said he wanted to make because it would help him acquire more media companies. The new deal shows that you don't have to be public to buy a media company: Vox is private, and so is Group Nine.

[ ... snip ... ]

And now the mashups are happening, one way or another. BuzzFeed, for instance, had already acquired HuffPost, the digital publisher Jonah Peretti had co-founded before launching his own company; he and Group Nine CEO Ben Lerer had previously talked about combining their two companies. Two years ago, Vox Media bought New York Magazine, and has been periodically picking up small media companies - last month [2021-11], for instance, it picked up podcast studio Criminal Productions.   Vice Media CEO Nancy Dubuc, who bought Refinery29 in 2019, has also made it clear that she thinks her industry should consolidate. And Dotdash, the digital publishing arm owned by Barry Diller's  IAC holding company, just swallowed magazine publisher Meredith and its library of titles, including much of what used to be called Time Inc.

[ ... snip ... ]

Beyond sheer bulk, the eventual pitch to investors would be the one the company [Vox Media] wants to start making to advertisers as soon as possible: We've got stuff for everybody. I surveyed some of Vox's competitors on Monday [2021-12-13] and heard more than a bit of shit-talking about the assets the company [Vox Media] is about to acquire: "You're buying a pet site," sniffed one executive. But if people want to buy ads on that pet site  [The Dodo], and that pet site's revenues help keep me employed, I'm not going to complain.

---

• Comment:: the following MediaBiasFactCheck.com is superseded by the comments, above.

• MediaBiasFactCheck.com:  overall, we rate BuzzFeed News Left-Center Biased based on editorial positions that moderately favor the left. We also rate them Mostly Factual rather than High due to past stories that either were not verified or ultimately were retracted.

Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER  |  Factual Reporting: MOSTLY FACTUAL  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

Founded in 2006 and headquartered in New York, BuzzFeed is a media news company delivering social news and entertainment. They provide a mix of breaking news, entertainment, and shareable content. Jonah Peretti and John Johnson are the founders of BuzzFeed, and the editor-in-chief was Ben Smith. In 2016, BuzzFeed split the news operation off from the BuzzFeed Entertainment Group, focusing more on BuzzFeed's video unit.

In 2018, BuzzFeed.com became a separate website, with Mark Schoofs serving as editor-in-chief. BuzzFeed News has been nominated for several Pulitzer Prizes and Webby Awards.

[Comment: Mark Schoofs' entry on Wikipedia indicates a thorough, Pulitzer Prize-winning accomplishment.]

Funded by / Ownership

Numerous investors funded BuzzFeed. New Enterprise Associates, New York-based venture capital firm RRE Ventures and Hearst Ventures were the early investors of BuzzFeed. In 2015, NBC (owned by Comcast Corporation; see also Vox) invested $200 million in BuzzFeed, and in 2016 they invested another $200 million. BuzzFeed also raised 50 million dollars from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. BuzzFeed is privately owned and does not disclose financial results to the public. However, BuzzFeed missed its revenue target in 2017 by 15%-20%. According to a New York Times article by Edmund Lee, founder Jonah Peretti says his company could eventually merge with rival online publishers to negotiate better terms with Facebook.

BuzzFeed's business model relies primarily on native advertising in the form of quizzes and videos sponsored by companies, which also goes by the name sponsored content or advertorial - which is advertising content that looks like an editorial. BuzzFeed News also solicits membership fees.

BuzzFeed News is currently owned by Verizon Media [now Yahoo], who recently acquired HuffPost.

Yahoo is an American multinational technology company that focuses on media and online business. Verizon Communications acquired AOL in 2015. When Verizon Communications purchased Yahoo! in 2017, it merged AOL and Yahoo! into a subsidiary named Oath Inc.

Analysis / Bias

In review, BuzzFeed News primarily publishes original reported news and investigations. News is broken down into sections such as Arts & Entertainment, Inequality, LGBTQ, Opinion, and Politics. BuzzFeed News is completely different from their parent site, which generally produces clickbait-type stores shared on Social Media. On the other hand, BuzzFeed News produces quality news reporting that is often investigative such as ...

Failed Fact Checks

None to date.

BuzzFeed Inc. said it will shut down its news division with an aim to consolidate its news content in HuffPost [The Huffington Post] and cut its workforce by 15 per cent - sending the shares of the digital media company BuzzFeed Inc. down 10 per cent on Thursday (2023-04-20). The second round of job cuts will affect 180 employees in teams including business, content, tech and admin, CEO Jonah Peretti said in an email to staff. BuzzFeed Inc. had previously cut 12 per cent of its staff in 2021-12. "We've faced more challenges than I can count in the past few years," said Jonah Peretti - blaming the COVID-19 pandemic , and the subsequent economic downturn - for the decline in the digital advertising and BuzzFeed's business.

BuzzFeed said the affected news staff would be considered for open roles at the main site BuzzFeed.com and HuffPost, which BuzzFeed Inc. had acquired in 2020. "Moving forward, we will have a single news brand in HuffPost, which is profitable, with a loyal direct front page audience," Jonah Peretti said in the note to employees. As part of the restructuring, the company said chief revenue officer Edgar Hernandez and chief operating officer Christian Baesler have decided to leave. President Marcela Martin will immediately take over all revenue functions.

BuzzFeed - which produces news, videos and online quizzes - was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti (Jonah H. Peretti) and John Johnson (John Seward Johnson III), and went public in 2021 through a blank-cheque merger. BuzzFeed's shares have lost 93 per cent of their value since the debut.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)  |  CBC News  |  CBC.ca [Canada]

Wikipedia: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian federal Crown corporation funded by the Government of Canada that serves as the national public broadcaster for both radio and television. ...  |  Controversies

Ombudsman

The CBC sets out to maintain its accuracy, integrity and fairness in its journalism. As a Canadian institution and a press undertaking, CBC set out the Journalistic Standards and Practices and works in compliance with these principles. Balanced viewpoints must be presented through on-the-air discussions. As it is with other public and private journalistic undertakings, credibility in the eyes of the general population is seen as the corporation's most valuable asset. The CBC Ombudsman is completely independent of CBC program staff and management, reporting directly to the President of the CBC and, through the President, to the corporation's board of directors.

Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

Founded in 1936 by an Act of Parliament, Canada's public broadcaster, CBC is a division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which replaced the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission. CBC presents news, talk, music, and entertainment programs in English, French, and Aboriginal languages. The CBC is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

In 2009, CBC's Television News, Radio News, and Digital News departments merged with CBC News. Michael Goldbloom is the Chairman, and Catherine Tait is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Funded by / Ownership

The CBC Board of Directors previously consisted of 12 members, all appointed by the Prime Minister of Canada. For example, former conservative prime minister Stephen Harper was accused of appointing the board with members that were also conservative donors. In 2016, Brian Mitchell (who was appointed to the CBC board by then prime minister Stephen Harper in 2008) resigned to seek the Conservative Party of Canada's presidency. However, recently this structure has changed, and now the non-partisan Independent Advisory Committee makes "merit-based" appointments. According to a The Globe and Mail article, "A government source said the board would comprise nine 'experts in broadcasting and digital technology, representatives of cultural sectors from across Canada,' as well as 'Indigenous peoples, official-language communities and youth,' who will be charged with compiling a list of candidates whose names will be submitted to the government."

Management

As a crown corporation, the CBC operates at arm's length (autonomously) from the government in its day-to-day business. The corporation is governed by the Broadcasting Act of 1991, under a board of directors and is directly responsible to the Parliament of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage. General management of the organization is in the hands of a president, who is appointed by the Governor General of Canada   in Council, on the advice of the Prime Minister.

According to The Hill Times, a clause in Bill C-60 - an omnibus budget implementation bill introduced by the government of Stephen Joseph Harper in 2013 - "appears to contradict a longstanding arm's-length relationship between the independent CBC and any government in power." The clause allows the "prime minister's cabinet to approve salaries, working conditions and collective bargaining positions for the CBC."

The CBC's main revenue comes from government funding (66%); other sources of revenue include advertising revenue (18%), subscriber fees (8%), and other sources. You can also view CBC business model details here.

Analysis / Bias

In review, when it comes to world news, CBC re-publishes stories from credible sources such as The Associated Press and Reuters: "U.S. stock markets flirt with end of historic rise," and "Indonesian rescuers struggle against heavy rain to reach tsunami-hit villages."

CBC reports Canadian national news with neutral headlines such as: "The 5 most dramatic moments of the year in Ontario politics". When it comes to sourcing, the CBC typically sources other CBC articles. This is acceptable as CBC produces and reports its own national news.

CBC's straight news reporting is consistently low biased, factual, and covers both sides of issues. Editorially, the opinion pages tend to be balanced with some stories slightly left-leaning such as this: "Doug Ford's 'efficiencies' seem to be costing taxpayers an awful lot of money: Robyn Urback and right-leaning: Why low-income earners should actually welcome Ontario's reversal on rent control." Opinion pieces have also been critical of liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. On the whole, slightly more opinion pieces favor the left. Further, the right-leaning National Post has accused the CBC of liberal bias.

Failed Fact Checks

None to date.

Comment: Although I regard the CBC as being generally trustworthy, I nonetheless have some significant concerns and criticisms with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - a Canadian federal Crown corporation that serves ostensively as the national public broadcaster for both radio and television.

Rex Murphy

The CBC is a longtime supporter | employer | enabler of Rex Murphy, a notable climate change denialist.

• [NationalObserver.com, 2021-02-19] Really, Rex Murphy?

A Toronto journalist with deep roots in Vancouver has written an incendiary post explaining why she resigned from the public broadcaster [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation].

Tara Henley opened her piece on the Substack platform  [Wikipedia: Substack, an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters] by revealing that she's been hearing complaints about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where she worked for several years. "People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog  [Tagalog language] is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported," she wrote. "Or why our pop culture radio show's coverage of the Dave Chappelle's  Netflix special [note also: Transphobia: Dave Chappelle] failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive. Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as 'brainstorm' and "lame.'"

The answer, according to Tara Henley, is that working at CBC now "is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others". "It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book; to actively book more people of some races and less of others," she added.

Tara Henley suggested that the focus on racial issues is resulting in less scrutiny of other issues that affect large numbers of people, such as the housing crisis, COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, COVID-19 vaccine mandates, accumulation of wealth by billionaires and power by bureaucrats, and the rising total of overdose deaths. She linked the CBC's current approach to "a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal division". "It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis," Henley wrote. "I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change."

Over the years, Tara Henley has contributed many articles to the Georgia Straight, some of which are available here. Tara Henley is one of many journalists who've left mainstream media outlets in recent years to share their work in newsletters that readers can subscribe to through the Substack platform.

Canadian Dimension

⚠️ CAUTION: potentially questionable content due to strong left-wing bias: carefully scrutinize authors and content for bias and truthfulness. For example, note contributions by American political writer Chris Hedges, who (for example) hosted the television program On Contact for RT America from 2016 to 2022. RT America is a U.S.-based propaganda network. RT America was a part of the RT network (RT.com: "Russian Television"), a global multilingual television news network based in Moscow and funded by the Russian government.

Canadian Dimension is a Canadian left-wing magazine founded in 1963 by Cy Gonick, and published out of Winnipeg, Manitoba four times a year. Canadian Dimension reported a circulation of 3,500 copies in 2013.

Canadian Dimension is a forum for left-wing political thought that ranges from New Democratic Party-style social democracy to libertarian socialism.

Canadian Dimension provides a forum for debate on topics such as socialism vs. social democracy, and features activist reports from all over Canada, trade unionist reportstrade unions, and reviews of books, films, websites, CDs, and videos.

Factual Reporting: MOSTLY FACTUAL.

History

Founded in 1963, Canadian Dimension is described as a magazine "for people who want to change the world," Canadian Dimension is a forum for left-wing political thought that ranges from New Democratic Party-style social democracy to libertarian socialism. According to their about page "Canadian Dimension is the longest-standing voice of the left in Canada. For more than half a century, Canadian Dimension has provided a forum for lively and radical debate where red meets green, socialists take on social democrats, Indigenous voices are heard, activists report from every corner of the country, and the latest books and films are critically reviewed."

Funded by / Ownership

Canadian Dimension is owned by Dimension Publishing LLC. Revenue is generated through advertising, donations, and subscription fees.

Analysis / Bias

In review, Canadian Dimension publishes news from an anti-capitalist, pro-socialist perspective such as this: "Red Flags: Reflections on racism and radicalism." A quote from the article reads "Capitalism lives and breathes racism. It can't survive without it. It picks it up, cultivates it, and injects it into everything." Canadian Dimension focuses on topics that are associated with the political left such as climate change, Feminism, Labour, and LGBTQ rights. However, many stories do not contain hyperlinked sourcing. When it comes to science, Canadian Dimension typically aligns with the consensus, though when it comes to GMOs they offer more negative reporting. Editorially, Canadian Dimension is far left in support of socialism as they often criticize liberal politicians such as Justin Trudeau for their pro-corporate policies.

Failed Fact Checks

None to date.

Canadian Press

Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

The Canadian Press is a national news agency headquartered in Toronto. It was established in 1917 as a vehicle to permit Canadian newspapers to exchange their news and information. It currently offers a wide variety of text, audio, photographic, video, and graphic content to websites, radio, television, and commercial clients in addition to newspapers and its long-standing ally, The Associated Press, a global news service based in the United States.

Funded by / Ownership

The Globe and Mail, Square Victoria Communications, Group Torstar own the Canadian Press. Licensing fees for news content generates revenue.

Analysis / Bias

In review, The Canadian Press is similar to Reuters and The Associated Press in that they report the news with minimal bias and excellent sourcing. The website does not publish news but instead sells its news stories to other media outlets.

Failed Fact Checks

None to date.

Capital Research Center  |  InfluenceWatch.org

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources.  See also (this file):

While providing detailed reports with apparently factual financial data (spot fact-checked, e.g., against IRS Form 990 filings), content from Capital Research Center is strongly biased against left-wing ideology (politics and policies).

The Capital Research Center (CRC) was founded in 1984 by Willa Johnson, former senior vice president of The Heritage Foundation. Donors to the Capital Research Center have included foundations run by the Koch family, the Scaife Foundations, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. As of 2017, CRC had received more than $265,000 from ExxonMobil.

In 2017, the CRC launched the website InfluenceWatch.org  [InfluenceWatch.org], which focuses on identifying funding sources of progressive organizations and initiatives. In Wikipedia, a search for "InfluenceWatch" redirects to the Capital Research Center.

Carbon Brief

Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

Founded in 2010, Carbon Brief describes itself as a "U.K.-based website" that publishes articles on the latest developments about climate science and climate policy. According to their "About Page," Carbon Brief, specializes in "clear, data-driven articles and graphics to help improve the understanding of climate change, both in terms of the science and the policy response."

Carbon Brief's Editor and Director is journalist Leo Hickman. All staff can be found on their about page.

Funded by / Ownership

Carbon Brief states that European Climate Foundation provides their funding. They report on their about page funding totaled £597,888 for the financial year of 2019.

Analysis / Bias

In review, Carbon Brief publishes articles related to climate change, including fact-checking articles in which headlines are generally low-biased "Factcheck: Did climate change contribute to India's catastrophic 'glacial flood'?" Information is usually properly sourced to credible media outlets such as the BBC,   Reuters,   The Associated Press,   CNN,   The New York Times, IPCC, and always factual.

Carbon Brief leans left politically in their concern for climate change, as evidenced by this article "U.S. election: Climate experts react to Joe Biden's victory." A quote from the article concerning the general reaction of scientists is positive as the former president had a climate skeptic view and acted accordingly, the quote reads "I find myself filled with relief and hope after what has been a nightmarish four years of the Trump administration reversing or halting numerous federal climate policies, sidelining and silencing scientists and trying to tamper with scientific reports." In general, they are pro-science in their publications and approach and hold a left-leaning political bias.

Failed Fact Checks

None to date. Carbon Brief is a resource for IFCN fact-checker Climate Feedback.

CNET

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources due to use of generative models (machine learning / natural language processing) to generate content - leading to multiple issues including misinformation. See: Editorial practices at Persagen.com concerning machine-generated material.

Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  Country: USA  |  Press Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE  |  Media Type: Website  |  Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY

Overall, we rate CNET Least Biased based on the publication of straightforward news without editorial bias. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact-check record.

History

Founded in 1994, CNET is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics. The current editors are Lindsey Turrentine and Connie Guglielmo.

Funded by / Ownership

CNET is owned by CBS Interactive, an American media company and a division of the . It is an online content network for information and entertainment. Its websites cover news, sports, entertainment, technology, and business. The website generates revenue through online advertising and its quarterly print magazine sales.

Analysis / Bias

In review, CNET could easily fall into our Pro-Science category as most content is related to tech or science and is factual. While their forte is the massive library of free and paid software and apps available for download, there's much more to CNET. They report on science news, new technology, consumer electronics, cars, and smart home gadgets and produce tech-related videos and podcasts. There's also an extensive how-to section for getting the most out of your electronics and a deals section for finding the best stuff at the best price.

While CNET doesn't often report on politics, they do when it pertains to their genre. For example, in this article regarding Donald Trump and a tech company, they utilize minimally loaded language and source properly: "Trump reiterates Huawei as 'national security threat.'" CNET typically does not take editorial positions, but instead publishes information when it pertains to politics.

Failed Fact Checks

None in the Last 5 years.

CNET (short for "Computer Network") is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics. CNET originally produced content for radio and television in addition to its website, and now uses new media distribution methods through its Internet television network, CNET Video, and its podcast and blog networks.

Founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, CNET was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through that unit's acquisition of CNET Networks in 2008. It has been owned by Red Ventures since 2020-10-30.

Other than English, CNET's region-specific and language-specific editions include Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.

[ ... snip ... ]

CNN

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources due to multiple failed fact checks, and numerous biases: billionaire influence  |  support for Donald Trump  |  transphobia  |  ...

... CNN is known for its dramatic live coverage of breaking news, some of which has drawn criticism as overly sensationalistic, and for its efforts to be nonpartisan, which have led to accusations of false balance. ...

... The presidency of Donald Trump has led to many prominent controversies involving CNN. The network was accused by critics of giving disproportionate amounts of coverage to Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. CNN president Jeff Zucker defended CNN against the criticism, commenting that out of the Republican Party candidates, Trump was the most willing to give on-air interviews. Trump commented upon the allegations during his speech at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), jokingly referring to CNN as the "Clinton News Network". ...

CNN Bias Rating: LEFT  |  Factual Reporting: MIXED  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: MEDIUM CREDIBILITY.

Funded by / Ownership

The Cable News Network is owned by WarnerMedia, which is a multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by AT&T. CNN's television stations and website are funded through cable subscriptions and an advertising model.

CNN: Billionaire influence

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Comment (2023-05-11):Warner Bros. Discovery  is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered in New York City. Warner Bros. Discovery was formed after the spin-off of WarnerMedia by AT&T, and its merger with Discovery, Inc. 2022-04-08. Warner Bros. Discovery's properties are divided into nine business units, including CNN. Source: Wikipedia, 2023-05-11: Warner Bros. Discovery.

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What will CNN become under John Malone? "I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing," the media billionaire John C. Malone told CNBC in November (2021-11-18). "I do believe good journalism could have a role in the future portfolio that Discovery / TimeWarner's going to represent," John Malone went on. In the interview with CNBC's  David Faber, John Malone also said: "Fox News, in my opinion, has followed an interesting trajectory of trying to have news news, I mean some actual journalism, embedded in a program schedule of all opinions." Brian Flood of right-wing Fox News said (2021-11-19) of John Malone's CNBC declaration: "Liberty Media chairman John Malone, who sits on the Discovery, Inc. board of directors, wants to see left-wing CNN revert back to nonpartisan journalism following the completion of a merger that would put the liberal network under the Discovery Channel."

More Than A Board Member

John Malone, in fact, is more than a Discovery board member; John Malone is Discovery's chair and largest shareholder. CNN - started by Ted Turner and now owned by AT&T (2022-02; later that year owned by Warner Bros. Discovery) - is part of an $85 billion acquisition by Discovery Inc., expected to be finalized this year (2022). John Malone's links to politics include being an active supporter - John Malone is currently a board member - of the Cato Institute - the Washington, D.C.-based libertarian think tank that espouses the privatization of numerous U.S. government agencies and programs, including Social Security and the United States Postal Service. John Malone's Liberty Media empire was among the big contributors to Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration festivities in Washington, D.C., with personal and corporate contributions adding up to $1 million. However in 2019, in another interview with David Faber on CNBC (2019-11-21), John Malone said: "Look, I think a lot of things Donald Trump has tried to do - identifying problems and trying to solve them - has been great. ... I just don't think he's the right guy to do it. Half the people that he's hired and thrown under the bus are now trying to kill him. I mean, what kind of thing is that?" John Malone then said he would vote for former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg for president in 2020.

No "Coward's Way Out"

Brian Freeman of right-wing   Newsmax said (2021-11-21): "CNN will be the key news property in the merged company, one that will be dominated by entertainment programming. There had been rumors that CNN might be spun off or sold, but John Malone indicated in the CNBC interview that's not likely." John Malone, Brian Freeman said, described such a move as a "coward's way out." Brian Freeman asserted that "John Malone has cause to worry about the left-wing network," because "CNN's ratings have collapsed over 50% in the past year (2021) and may be suffering from a credibility gap with viewers. ... Last March (2022), a Hill-HarrisX (The Hill) poll found that 47% of registered voters believe CNN holds a liberal bias in reporting." (In the same poll, 48% of respondents said they believed Fox News had a conservative bias - but who's counting?) Steve Straub of the right-wing website The Federalist Papers said (2021-11-22) of John Malone's CNBC comments: "CNN's soon-to-be new owner just made a startling admission, one that has been obviously apparent to us and many others for some time, that the so-called news network has no actual journalists."

The most powerful man you've never heard of

" John Malone ... Meet the Most Powerful Man That You've Never Heard Of," was a heading of a 2018 piece on the website of the British-based Gentleman's Journal. John Malone owns "services and TV channels you've most likely used or watched ... yet the name John Malone still draws a sea of blank faces. ... One of the most powerful, yet unknown, individuals in America ... as Liberty Media's chairman and largest stakeholder, John Malone is one of the world's most influential media magnates." In addition to being part-owner of the Atlanta Braves - the Gentleman's Journal website noted - "John Malone currently owns more land in America than anyone else: 2.2 million acres to be precise. ... John Malone has a net worth of around $9.22 billion, and thanks to his buccaneering role in media deals and land ownership, John Malone has been nicknamed the 'Cable Cowboy'." The article related how John Malone (born in Connecticut), has a Ph.D. in operations research from Johns Hopkins University, and:

"joined the worldwide management consulting firm McKinsey & Company in 1968. However, fatigued from the constant traveling his job required, he left after five years to join General Instrument; while at General Instrument, John Malone ran Jerrold Electronics - a subsidiary which produces minicomputers for the cable TV industry - and was eventually offered the role of CEO of Tele-Communications, Inc. ... which only had 400,000 subscribers and owed creditors $132 million.... John Malone was only 29 at the time. Within 17 years of snapping up smaller operators and acquiring minority stakes in other channels, Tele-Communications, Inc. - under the management of John Mal - had accumulated 8.5 million subscribers and grew into the second largest cable company after Time Warner. Because of his business deals in the byzantine world of cable TV, John Malone was compared to 'Darth Vader' by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. ... At the helm of Liberty Media, the young American (John Malone) changed the organization - Tele-Communications, Inc. - from just providing cable services to actually owning the networks broadcast on its infrastructure, including the Discovery Channel,   QVC, and Virgin Media.".

CNN could face a reset

The headline last week in Variety (2022-02-08): "CNN Could Face a Reset Under Discovery Control." The article by Brian Steinberg spoke of how under its recently resigned president, Jeff Zucker, "CNN became more swashbuckling, more colorful ..." But Discovery is "a media company that tries to maintain a quieter corporate demeanor." Jeff Zucker changed the culture of CNN, shoving it into more direct competition with Fox News Channel and MSNBC. ... Will Discovery change the recipe? There are signs that executives at the company see Jeff Zucker's departure from CNN as an opportunity for a reset at CNN. Variety's piece spoke of those who "argue Jeff Zucker's strategies have been good for CNN - and for people who have been helped by its aggressive accountability journalism in Washington." The article concluded: "Executives charged with leading CNN in the wake of Jeff Zucker's exit have vowed to staffers in internal meetings that his (Jeff Zucker's) vision for CNN will remain intact, but chances are Discovery will dim Jeff Zucker's flash." That would not be good news. The future of social democracy in the United States is at stake amid the polarization and deadlock of the political process in Washington, D.C.. Media are increasingly under the control of right-wing zealots like Rupert Murdoch and those behind Newsmax, etc., who are poisoning communications. Critically needed now is an independent, honest, credible press providing, yes, aggressive accountability journalism - a light to enable people to find their way out of this mess. Instead, the nation's oldest cable news channel - CNN - will soon be under the control of someone ( John Malone) who appears to want it to follow the "interesting trajectory" of Fox News.

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CNN: Support of Donald Trump

On 2023-05-10 CNN hosted Donald Trump, with predictable results.

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Donald John Trump (born 1946-06-14) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.

Lawsuit for sexual battery and defamation

In 2022, E. Jean Carroll sued Donald Trump for sexually abusing her in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s and for defamation when Donald Trump denied her story during his presidency; the jury found Donald Trump liable and awarded E. Jean Carroll $5,000,000 in damages. Source (2023-05-10): Wikipedia. Main article: E. Jean Carroll vs. Donald J. Trump

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CNN: Transphobia

When Lia Thomas first entered the women's National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) swimming scene in 2021, Lia Thomas's presence was immediately felt. National media outlets became obsessed with Lia Thomas. Lia Thomas got the kind of attention rarely given to swimming athletes outside of the Olympics. Lia Thomas was good, but she wasn't the next Simone Biles of her field. So what explained such a frenzy? Simple: Lia Thomas was a transgender woman having success in the women's division.

From 2021-12-07 to 2022-02-22 CNN  spent nearly 15 minutes criticizing Lia Thomas' participation in the women's division but less than two minutes discussing the dozens of bills being introduced across the country banning trans people from sports. Meanwhile, from 2021-12-03 through 2022-01-12 Fox News aired 32 segments that attacked Lia Thomas, according to   Media Matters for America. That pace didn't slow down for months. "That level of coverage of women's swimming, specifically, has not come close to being matched in the year after the end of Lia Thomas' swimming career," says Ari Drennen, the LGBTQ program director at Media Matters for America. "They like to say that this is coming from a place of caring about women's sports, but it's hard not to notice that they don't really cover women's sports unless trans women are competing in them."

The intensity of the critical media coverage helped fuel an equally intense backlash against Lia Thomas. Sixteen of her University of Pennsylvania teammates signed a letter midway through the swimming season, saying that Lia Thomas had an unfair advantage. That letter was organized by former Olympic swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar - who, along with fellow Olympic swimmer   Donna de Varona - is a founding member of the Women's Sport Policy Working Group, which has been leading the movement to across the board. (The Human Rights Campaign has called the Women's Sport Policy Working Group a "hate group.") And World Aquatics - the international federation that governs the sport of swimming - released a new transgender participation policy in 2022-07 that essentially bans trans women from competing by creating incredibly restrictive requirements for the inclusion of trans women. (As I - Frankie de la Cretaz - have written previously, there is no real evidence that trans athletes have an inherent advantage over their cisgender counterparts.)

[ ... snip ... ]

CommonDreams.org

Common Dreams NewsCenter, often referred to simply as Common Dreams, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, U.S.-based news website that declares itself as serving the progressive community. Common Dreams publishes news stories, editorials, and a newswire of current, breaking news. Common Dreams also re-publishes relevant content from numerous other sources such as The Associated Press and had published left-wing writers such as Robert Reich and Molly Ivins. The website also provides links to other relevant columnists, periodicals, radio outlets, news services, and websites.

Factual Reporting: HIGH.

MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

Chronicle Herald, The

⚠️ CAUTION: potentially questionable content; carefully scrutinize authors and content for bias and truthfulness (particularly sources of information for posted content).

Factual Reporting: MIXED.

History

Founded in 1874 as The Morning Herald, The Chronicle Herald is a newspaper published in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Funded by / Ownership

The paper is owned by a Canadian newspaper publishing company, SaltWire Network, and is funded through subscriptions and advertising.

Analysis / Bias

The Chronicle Herald delivers breaking news, opinion, sports, lifestyles, and more. In review, The Chronicle Herald has a right-center bias in reporting as many stories slightly favor the right. When reporting world news they typically use The Associated Press and with national news, they use the Canadian Press, which is similar to The Associated Press. Opinion and editorial pieces also slightly favor the right and typically are light on sourcing. The Chronicle Herald also had to apologize and retract a story about immigrants that was unverified and subsequently picked up by numerous far-right websites and reported as factual news.

Overall, we rate The Chronicle Herald as Right-Center biased in reporting and Mixed factually due to publishing an unverified claim and poor sourcing. (M. Huitsing 9/15/2017) Updated (9/14/2018)

Conversation, The

The Conversation is a network of not-for-profit media outlets publishing news stories and research reports online, with accompanying expert opinion and analysis. Articles are written by academics and researchers under a free Creative Commons license, allowing reuse without modification. Its model has been described as explanatory journalism. Except in "exceptional circumstances", it only publishes articles by "academics employed by - or otherwise formally connected to - accredited institutions, including universities and accredited research bodies".: 8 

The website was launched in Australia in 2011-03. The network has since expanded globally with a variety of local editions originating from around the world. In 2019-09 The Conversation reported a monthly online audience of 10.7 million users, and a combined reach of 40 million people when including republication. The site employed over 150 full-time staff as of 2020.

Each regional or national edition of The Conversation is an independent not-for-profit or charity funded by various sources such as partnered universities and university systems, governments and other grant awarding bodies, corporate partners, and reader donations.

[ ... snip ... ]

Content

Articles are written by academic researchers in their respective areas of expertise. They either pitch topics or are specifically commissioned to write on a topic in which they are a subject-matter expert, including for articles about current events. The Conversation's core staff then edits these articles, ensuring a balance between reader accessibility and academic rigour. Editors that work for the site frequently have past experience working for traditional news outlets. The original authors then review the edited version. Topics include politics, society, health, science, and the environment. Authors are required to disclose conflicts of interest. All articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution / No derivatives licence.

Fact checking

The site often publishes fact-checks that are produced by academics from major universities, then blind peer reviewed by another academic who comments on the accuracy of the fact check.

In 2016, the FactCheck unit of The Conversation became accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network  [IFCN fact-checker], an alliance of fact-checkers hosted at the Poynter Institute in the U.S. The assessment criteria require non-partisanship, fairness, transparency of funding, sources, and methods, and a commitment to open and honest corrections.

Technology

The Conversation uses a custom publishing and content management system built in Ruby on Rails. This system enables authors and editors to collaborate on articles in real time. Articles link to author profiles - including disclosure statements - and personal dashboards showing authors' engagement with the public. This is intended to encourage authors for the site to become more familiar with social media and their audience.

[ ... snip ... ]

Reception

Articles originally published in The Conversation have received republication on a regular basis by major news outlets. These have included The New York Times  [note - yellow-flagged: The New York Times], The Guardian  [note - red-flagged: The Guardian], The Washington Post  [note - yellow-flagged: The Washington Post], and CNN  [note - red-flagged: CNN]. As of 2015, about 80 per cent of the site's readership were of a non-academic background.

The Conversation has been described in Public Understanding of Science as "a blend of scientific communication, public science communication and science journalism, and a convergence of the professional worlds of science and journalism".

[ ... snip ... ]

• Overall, we rate The Conversation Least Biased based on covering both the right-center and left-center politically, as well as covering evidence-based topics. We also rate them Very High for factual reporting due to excellent sourcing of information and a clean fact check record. In fact, The Conversation is an IFCN fact-checker.

• Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED  |  Factual Reporting: VERY HIGH  |  Country: Australia (26/180 Press Freedom)  |  Media Type: Website  |  Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY

History

Founded in 2010, The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit media outlet. Academics, edited by professional journalists author articles, and freely available online and for republication through a creative commons license. The Australian website launched in March 2011, and has expanded into editions in the United Kingdom (U.K.) in 2013, United States (U.S.) in 2014, Africa in 2015, France in 2015, Canada in 2017, Indonesia in 2017, Spain in 2018.

In 2016, The Conversation's FactCheck unit became the first fact-checking team in Australia and one of only two worldwide accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network, an alliance of fact-checkers hosted at the Poynter Institute in the U.S. The current editor is Misha Ketchell.

Funded by / Ownership

The Conversation websites are held by the not-for-profit educational charity owned by The Conversation Trust. The Conversation is funded by the university and research sector, government, and business.

Analysis / Bias

In review, The Conversation is covered by a charter of editorial independence. The authors must be academics or researchers. Authors have final sign-off on their articles and complete statements that disclose potential conflicts.

The articles reviewed on the U.S. Conversation website demonstrate the use of minimally loaded language such as this: "Why the US has higher drug prices than other countries." Like most on The Conversation, this article is thoroughly sourced from credible educational and media outlets such as the Commonwealth Fund,   The New York Times, HHS.gov, and Kaiser Health News  [Kaiser Family Foundation].

In general, The Conversation covers a wide range of topics, most of which are evidence-based. Opinions expressed come from both the slightly left and slightly right, with more coming from a more liberal perspective.

Failed Fact Check

None in the Last 5 years. In fact, The Conversationis an IFCN fact-checker in Australia.

C-SPAN

• Overall, we rate C-SPAN Least Biased and Very-High for factual reporting based on unfiltered coverage of congress.

• Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED  |  Factual Reporting: VERY HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

History

Launched in 1979, C-SPAN offers live, unfiltered access to the congress and straightforward government news. C-SPAN also offers a morning call-in talk show called Washington Journal that discusses government and political issues. The C-SPAN network includes three television channels (C-SPAN, C-SPAN2, and C-SPAN3), one radio station (WCSP-FM), and a group of websites that provide streaming media and archives of C-SPAN programs.

According to the website, the mission is to "provide C-SPAN's audience access to the live gavel-to-gavel proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and to other forums where public policy is discussed, debated and decided--all without editing, commentary or analysis and with a balanced presentation of points of view."

Funded by / Ownership

C-SPAN is a private, nonprofit organization owned by the National Cable Satellite Corporation, "funded by a 6¢ per subscriber affiliate fee paid by its cable and satellite affiliates, and does not have advertisements on any of its networks, radio stations, or websites, nor does it ever solicit donations or pledges. The network operates independently, and neither the cable industry nor Congress has control of the content of its programming."

Analysis / Bias

In review, C-SPAN programming is quite literally a camera pointed at congressional events. Headlines on the website using straightforward, non-biased language such as this: "Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Testifies on President's 2020 Budget Request." The website also provides video clips and transcripts from the morning call-in show, Washington Journal, which we have rated as Least Biased. In general, C-SPAN is unfiltered and minimally biased.

Failed Fact Checks

None to date.

CTV News [Canada]

Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED  |  Factual Reporting: HIGH  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY.

• Trust Project and CTV News  |  The Trust Project

• Wikipedia

• MediaBiasFactCheck:  "Overall, we rate CTV News Least Biased based on balanced story selection and minimal use of emotional language. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact check record." (7/28/2016) Updated (M. Huitsing 6/24/2019)

History

Established in 1961 and based in Canada, CTV News is the news division of CTV Television Network. The CTV News website features Canada and world news, politics, sports, entertainment, and more. CTV News's parent company BCE Inc. (formerly: Bell Canada Enterprises), was founded by Charles Fleetford Sise in 1880. Charles Fleetford Sise was the second president of Bell Canada (formerly: The Bell Telephone Company of Canada).

Funded by / Ownership

CTV Inc. owns CTV News, a subdivision of Bell Media Inc., a subsidiary of BCE Inc. (formerly: Bell Canada Enterprises), a holding company for Bell Canada.   Bell Media is headquartered in East Toronto, Ontario. Gordon M. Nixon is Chair of the Board of both BCE Inc. and Bell Canada. George Cope is the President & Chief Executive Officer of BCE Inc. and bell canada.

CTV News revenue is based on advertising and can find financial reports here.

Analysis / Bias

In review, CTV News republishes articles from The Associated Press,   Agence France-Presse, and their national news agency, the Canadian Press.

Further, CTV News publishes its own articles written by journalists such as "Truth Tracker: No, Justin Trudeau isn't converting from Christianity to Islam." Justin Trudeau is the current Prime Minister of Canada. He is also the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada (Center-Left). When publishing articles regarding conservative Doug Ford, there is slightly loaded language such as this: "Doug Ford's chief of staff resigns one day after appointment controversy." This story is sourced from the right-leaning   The Globe and Mail.

Editorially, CTV News does not endorse political candidates. Further, they do not publish opinion content; however, the website does publish the political blog of Don Martin, who tends to lean right with his posts.

Failed Fact Checks

None to date.

---

• [bc.CTVNews.ca, 2023-01-01] We will not be intimidated: A New Year's message from our newsroom.

My dad was a little boy in Columbus, Ohio, when some other kids in his neighbourhood pried open a manhole cover on the street and forced him to climb down inside. His was the only Jewish family in the area, and everybody knew it. He remembered being terrified in the darkness and damp, trying to escape by crawling through the drainpipe towards the light from the other manholes along the block. But the kids above could hear him down there and when he tried to push his way out, they just ran up and stood on top. My dad always told us he couldn't remember how long they kept him trapped down there, but the message was clear: Jews belonged in the sewer.

It was that story of early 1940s anti-Semitism that came to mind last 2022-02 when I looked out the window in the CTV Vancouver newsroom at an angry crowd that had gathered on the street below to protest our journalists' coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. People in the crowd were calling us "vermin." One guy even wrote the word on a sign he was holding up. Vermin - you know, like rats in a sewer. It was 2022 and hate had arrived at the front door. Dozens of Vancouver police officers stood watch as speakers called for our journalists inside to be jailed, or worse. As the protests moved to other local newsrooms around Vancouver week after week, organizers christened their gatherings with the slogan, "The Media is the Virus." Working in the news business has always meant being criticized by people who don't like your choice of stories, but as the calendar flips to a new year (2023), it's hard not to look back on 2022 as a year when the discourse in Canada around the role of journalism in our democracy reached a new low. It was a year when criticism metastasized into hatred and sometimes violence. Not long after the protest at our newsroom, anti-mask mandate protesters spat at reporters covering a march at the Pacific Highway border crossing, just one of many similar incidents that took place across Canada. And while the pandemic mandates have eased, the level of anger directed towards the journalistic profession is still disturbingly high.

One of the most common misconceptions fuelling that anger focusses on how journalists pick the stories we cover each day. Some are convinced that newsrooms take their cues on what to report from corporate overlords or government masters. The truth is, story selection in our newsroom - and in every newsroom I've seen over the past 25 years - is much less conspiratorial. We all get together each morning to pitch ideas and the best ideas turn into stories. That's it. No puppet masters pulling the strings, just a group of journalists representing a wide range of backgrounds and interests talking about stories and deciding together which ones to chase. When we make a mistake, we believe in owning it; if there's an error in a story, we'll announce it and fix it. As for standards and accountability, we're guided by a newsroom code of ethics and by organizations like the Radio Television Digital News Association, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, and the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. As for bias, every good reporter is allowed only one: a bias in favour of the truth and the public's right to know about it.

The hatred and threats of violence towards journalists in 2022 did have at least one positive outcome. We're seeing newsrooms from competing organizations co-operating and supporting each other in new and encouraging ways. In Vancouver, British Columbia, the leaders of several local newsrooms - including this one - started meeting regularly to discuss protocols around safety and to compare notes and share information about threats to our people. That spirit of co-operation and common cause was on full display in early 2022-11 as local stations pooled resources and staff to provide live coverage of the regimental funeral for fallen Burnaby, British Columbia RCMP officer Shaelyn Yang.

As for working as a CTV News journalist in 2022, the attempts at intimidation often seemed to have the opposite effect. Our reporters dug into investigations and pursued answers and information with a renewed sense of purpose, perhaps because it became so apparent that - just like the search for light in the darkness - our communities need high-quality journalism more than ever in this age of disinformation. From our continuing exposure of the crisis in British Columbia's health-care system, to stories of inspiration as refugees fleeing actual persecution and oppression found shelter here, we continued to chase the stories we believe need to be told, no matter who tries to shut us up. It's what journalists have always done - and it's what we promise to keep doing in 2023.

Happy New Year (2023) from everyone in the CTV Vancouver newsroom.

The story of a CTV News Vancouver reporter's emotional reunion with his extended Indigenous family has been honoured with one of journalism's most prestigious awards. In an announcement from Washington D.C., the Radio Television Digital News Association named CTV News Vancouver as the winner of the 2023 Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. In 2022-08 CTV News at Six anchor Mi-Jung Lee and photographer Gary Rutherford joined their colleague Ben Miljure as he travelled to the remote community of Alert Bay,   British Columbia,   to meet hundreds of members of his extended family. ... | see also: (YouTube, 2023-02-03) RTDNA Entry for Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Cook family reunion stories that aired 2022-08-02 and 2022-08-02.

Daily Beast, The

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources due to controversies and multiple failed fact checks.

Bias Rating: LEFT  |  Factual Reporting: MIXED  |  MBFC Credibility Rating: MEDIUM CREDIBILITY.

History

According to its about page, The Daily Beast is a news and opinion website focusing on politics, power, and pop culture headquartered in New York City. The Daily Beast was founded in 2008 by magazine editor, columnist, and talk-show host Tina Brown. In 2010, The Daily Beast and Newsweek merged in a joint venture named The Newsweek Daily Beast Company, which lasted for 2 years. In 2013, Editor-in-Chief and founder Tina Brown announced her departure. John Avlon then became Editor-in-Chief. He was the former associate editor for The New York Sun and speechwriter for former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani. In May of 2018, Avlon announced his departure from The Daily Beast.  Noah Shachtman, co-founder and editor of Wired magazine's national security blog Danger Room serves as the new Editor-in-Chief. Heather Dietrick serves as the CEO. You can view the masthead here.

Funded by / Ownership

The Daily Beast's parent company is IAC (InterActiveCorp). which is run by Barry Diller, who had led the creation of the Fox network. IAC's CEO is Joey Levin. IAC (InterActiveCorp) is a media and internet company comprised of some of the world's well-known brands such as HomeAdvisor, Vimeo, About.com, Dictionary.com, Investopedia, and more. The Daily Beast is primarily funded through online advertising.

Analysis / Bias

According to a Washington Post article, Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman describes how he will improve the The Daily Beast. He states, "I want us to lean harder into who we are," explaining further, "That means that if The Daily Beast is in the business of scoops - more scoops. "If we're painting in bright colors now, I want to paint even brighter."

In review, The Daily Beast tends to publish left-leaning stories utilizing sensationalized headlines with emotionally loaded words such as ...

Failed Fact Checks

Fact Check: Was A 'Huge Percentage' of Deported Salvadorans Killed or Harmed Upon Return To El Salvador? - False

"Stephen Paddock used guns that are more powerful and accurate than what Marine infantry carry - and they're totally legal to buy," - False

Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner expressed genuine concern over "tracking devices" when he asked a health official about their potential presence in COVID-19 vaccines during a county board meeting. - False

Daily Caller

🛑 STOP! Excluded from sources due to founding and association with disinformationist Tucker Carlson.

The Daily Caller is a right-wing news and opinion website based in Washington, D.C. It was founded by now-Fox News host Tucker Carlson and political pundit Neil Patel  [disambiguation: not Nilay Patel] in 2010. Launched as a "conservative answer to The Huffington Post", the Daily Caller quadrupled its audience and became profitable by 2012, surpassing several rival websites by 2013. The Daily Caller is a member of the White House press pool.

The Daily Caller has published false stories on multiple occasions. The website publishes articles that dispute the scientific consensus on climate change  [climate change denial]. Until 2018, the website had also published articles by white supremacists such as Jason Kessler and Peter Brimelow.html. Scott Greer was deputy editor at the Daily Caller. After his departure in June 2018, it was revealed that Scott Greer published articles espousing white nationalists,  racist anti-Black and antisemitic views under a pseudonym in white supremacist publications.

In June 2020, Tucker Carlson left the Daily Caller. Neil Patel confirmed that he had bought out Tucker Carlson's stake and brought in Omeed Malik, a Muslim American - Democrat - as a new partner. The Daily Caller became a minority-owned and minority-run company thereafter.