Study: The Stronger Your Political Beliefs, the More Likely You’ll See Bias and Misinformation in the News
Author:
Date:
06/24/2026
Studies have shown that people perceive the media to be biased against their own political viewpoint. This is called “hostile media effect.” And in a related new study, researchers have found that people tend to believe that misinformation disproportionately targets their side, as well.
The “hostile media effect” is present for people both on the political left and the political right, but the level of devotion toward one’s own political party matters. According to Nieman Labs, data suggests that “the more politically committed someone is to a party or ideology, the more likely they are to see the news media as biased against them.”
What’s fascinating is that even when people were shown the same segments from national evening newscasts by ABC, NBC and CBS, people on each side of the political spectrum felt that the stories — the same exact news reporting — were biased against them. In addition, the more knowledgeable a person was about a particular news topic, the more they detected bias in reporting about it.
The new study focusing on misinformation found similar results: “As with the news media, people tend to believe that misinformation disproportionately targets their side.” And people who were more attached to their political party were more likely to see their party as targets of misinformation.
At Ad Fontes Media, we’re aware of how our own political beliefs affect how we interpret the news. That’s why we require that each piece of content is rated by at least three people: one who holds political beliefs on the left, one with political beliefs on the right, and one center. No piece of content (an article, podcast, video or TV episode) is added to the Media Bias Chart® until it has been rated by three analysts with different political viewpoints. We believe this is the best way to mitigate our own biases when doing this important work of media analysis. (You can read more about our methodology here).
Today we’re releasing the newest edition of our TV/video chart. To date, our team has analyzed more than 5,600 individual pieces of content (that’s TV news show episodes, documentaries and YouTube/Rumble videos) from more than 1,200 TV/video sources (we’ve fully rated 900 of them). With at least three people rating each piece of content, that means we have 16,800 separate ratings on TV/video content alone (this doesn’t include our ratings on website articles and podcast episodes).
We’re committed to this work, and we do it the best way we know how — by employing a team of politically diverse analysts who are trained to rate news content for its bias and reliability.
The June edition of the Media Bias Chart® for TV/Video includes 46 of the 900 news and news-like TV and video shows fully rated by our team. We know it’s hard to see the logos of all 46 sources; you can see a list of them here).
Why these 46? We choose a selection of sources to feature each month because it’s impossible to put 900 TV/video sources in one image (the result would be a completely unreadable chart). In order to make the logos as large and readable as possible, we have magnified a portion of the chart and removed portions around the edges that contain no sources.
Sources inside the green box of the chart have been found to be minimally biased and fact-based. Here’s a list of the 14 sources that qualified for the green box on this edition of the TV/video chart. (More TV/video sources fall within the green box, and we’ll feature those on future charts.)
- 2000 Meters to Andriivka
- C-SPAN Live Stream
- C-SPAN: Ceasefire
- CBC: The Fifth Estate
- CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil
- Fox News: Special Report w/ Bret Baier
- Fox News: The Journal Editorial Report
- i24: The Rundown
- MS NOW: Way Too Early with Ali Vitali (MSNBC)
- NBC News NOW: Morning News NOW
- Netflix: Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere
- Netflix: The Perfect Neighbor
- NewsNation: NewsNation Live Weekend with Keleigh Beeson
- PBS TV Network
10 TV/video sources are making their debut on the June Media Bias Chart®:
- CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil
- Fox News: Saturday In America w/ Kayleigh McEnany
- Fox News: The Sunday Briefing
- Hardball with Chris Matthews
- Jack Cocchiarella (YouTube)
- MS NOW: Separated (MSNBC)
- NBC News NOW: Morning News NOW
- Netflix: Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere
- NewsNation: NewsNation Live Weekend with Keleigh Beeson
- Thank You, Dr. Fauci
Don’t see your favorite show on the June chart? You can look up ratings on all sources we’ve analyzed and create custom chart images using our free mobile app available for Apple and Android. (Our analysts have fully rated more than 4,730 web, podcast and TV/video sources, with commercial data on about 14,460!) You also can access the free version of the interactive chart on the website, which allows access to data on 250 of our top sources. Daily search limits apply.
Beth Heldebrandt is Director of Communications at Ad Fontes Media. She has more than 30 years of experience in the fields of journalism and public relations, and was an adjunct instructor of journalism for 17 years at Eastern Illinois University. Beth has a B.A. in journalism from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and an M.A. in English from Eastern Illinois University. She’s a mom and grandma, and enjoys traveling, puzzles and reading.
