OPINION | MIKE MASTERSON: Bias defined

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I discovered the AllSides Media Bias Chart last week. It pretty well confirmed my observations in recent years that much of our national media has chosen political sides, rather than striving to remain neutral, objective and fair in reporting.

The chart is designed to help readily identify different political and cultural perspectives so readers can get the fullest picture and think for themselves.

“Knowing the political bias of media outlets allows you to consume a balanced news diet and avoid manipulation and fake news. Everyone is biased, but hidden bias misleads and divides us,” say the executives at Allsides. Its chart is based on a list of over 800 media bias ratings.

AllSides says it rates only online content rather than TV, radio, or broadcast content, and is intended to puncture filter bubbles so one can consider multiple perspectives.

AllSides contends its chart “is more comprehensive in its methodology than any other media bias chart on the Web. While other media bias charts show you the subjective opinion of the one person who made it, our ratings are based on multipartisan, scientific analysis. We use multiple methodologies to rate bias.”

Structured according to five categories: Left, Lean Left, Center, Lean Right and Right, here is how Allsides evaluated the way some major media corporations offer information nowadays.

Left: Alternet, Buzzfeed, CNN opinion, Democracy Now, Daily Beast, HuffPost, Jacobin, Mother Jones, The Intercept, MSNBC, Newsweek, The New York Times opinion, The New Yorker, The Nation, Slate and Vox.

Lean Left: ABC, AP Fact Check, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, CBS, CNN (news only), Bloomberg, The Economist, The Guardian, The New York Times (news), NPR opinion, Politico, Time, ProPublica, Time and Yahoo News.

Center: The Wall Street Journal (news only), Associated Press, Axios,

BBC, Christian Science Monitor,

Reuters, NPR (news only), Real Clear Politics, The Hill and USA Today.

Lean Right: The American Conservative, Fox News (online news only), The Epoch Times, The Dispatch, Newmax (news only), New York Post (news only), The Post Millennial, Reason, MarketWatch, Wall Street Journal opinion, The Washington Times and Washington Examiner.

Right: The American Spectator, Breitbart, The Blaze, CBN, Daily Mail, Daily Caller, Fox News (opinion), National Review, The Federalist, OAN, Daily Wire and Newsmax opinion.

Frankly, I find it a shame that the entities we rely upon for accurate, objective and fair information about our nation and world choose to take sides favoring any ideology.

Divisive bias

Speaking of media bias, in reviewing a poll from August, I lamented the widening gap between what Americans expect from the news media compared with what they get.

While Americans increasingly value the media’s role in our democracy, as the perception of media bias swells, the poll also showed many losing confidence in the idea of an objective media.

The findings were released in a Gallup and Knight Foundations survey “American Views 2020: Trust, Media and Democracy,” where 20,000 Americans participated.

Among the results: While 81% say the news media is “critical” to democracy, 46% see “a great deal” of political bias in news coverage. Fifty-seven percent concede their own news sources are biased and 64% are concerned about bias in the news that others receive.

They also suspect that inaccuracies in reporting are purposeful, with 52% believing reporters misrepresent the facts, and 28% believing reporters make them up entirely. Sixty-seven% of Republicans have an unfavorable view of the media, while 20% of Democrats feel likewise.

Hellos and goodbyes

I asked Alexa to play soothing music the other morning over coffee and smiled to hear that remarkably poignant song by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman, “Time to Say Goodbye.”

Yet again, I lapsed into moments of reflection.

Ever stop for a closer look at what life offers? The answer likely is no if one is under, say, 40. But others of us increasingly will find time to ponder the patterns of life.

One fact I’ve noted is that this fleeting experience we agree to label as existence consists largely of hellos and goodbyes from our initial breath forward.

We arrive in this world with our first hello, never knowing when the inevitable final goodbye will come.

But along the way, we fall in line with an endless succession of hellos and goodbyes.

We awake each morning to offer hellos to those who share our world. Within a short time we are bidding them goodbye and we head off into days at school, work or wherever.

More hellos upon return, followed by goodbye when we plop our heads on pillows that evening.

And so it goes throughout our stay here.

I wonder exactly how many others have come and gone in my years thus far. I’m talking about all the friends from school, those I’ve known in practicing this craft across six states, and those I befriended only to lose track over time.

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Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master’s journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at

mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.

Bias is Anti-Balance: Consuming Media is Like Riding a Bicycle

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An Interactive Media Bias Chart is well worth taking a close look:

This might as well be a graphic representation of someone trying to ride a bicycle.

Zachery Tyler explained it succinctly like this:

As usual, your best bet for legitimate sources of information is to read the wire services and actual newspapers, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY, and The Hill, and to watch serious public-minded outlets like PBS News Hour and BBC News. For more information, including the methodology and more than 300 sources ranked, see the website.

To that I’ll add that I would say when you lean too far either side and lack security controls to recenter you’re doomed.

And on that note, here is an excellent video by Clint Watts explaining how and why Russia has been so villainous in its attempt to push Americans off-balance and crash the country.