What Gives Ad Fontes Media the Authority to Rate the News?
Author:
Date:
08/19/2024
Our August 2024 Flagship Media Bias Chart is out today! Whenever we release this update, twice a year, a ton of folks share and discuss it (for more details on this version, read our new blog post about it here) An underlying question always accompanies that discussion:
“What gives you the authority to say how reliable or biased a news source is?”
We get asked this question a lot, often by skeptics, but everyone should ask it.
Over the years we have realized that any credibility we have originates directly from one place: the trust of those who rely on us to rate the news.
No one has to believe or adopt our ratings, but millions of people do. Having a following alone doesn’t make one correct or trustworthy(see, e.g., cult leaders). But it’s the kind of people who trust us that makes our work so widely adopted.
Specifically, it’s the trust of:
- A broad base of people with different political beliefs (which is difficult to achieve in our polarized climate) and
- Individuals and organizations whose own work depends on ours being as accurate as possible (academics who cite us, textbook publishers of our chart, educators who use our materials, and businesses that use our data to make decisions).
Trust comes when people look under the hood at our methodology and find rigor, transparency, humility, and continuous improvement.
There isn’t a governing body that rates us, and if there was, you could ask “well who rates them?” in an infinite regression.
Ultimately, “who rates the raters” has to be the public, and that’s why our ratings are publicly displayed for inspection. You can find our ratings for any individual news source and the articles/episodes they are based on within our website and mobile app.
We are acutely aware that no one *has* to trust us and we hear from people who don’t all the time. That public criticism has always been an important part of the very development of our methodology. There’s valid and good faith criticism in there (mixed in with other kinds), so we continue to listen to it and use it to improve.
Enjoy this latest version!
Vanessa Otero is a former patent attorney in the Denver, Colorado, area with a B.A. in English from UCLA and a J.D. from the University of Denver. She is the original creator of the Media Bias Chart (October 2016), and founded Ad Fontes Media in February of 2018 to fulfill the need revealed by the popularity of the chart — the need for a map to help people navigate the complex media landscape, and for comprehensive content analysis of media sources themselves. Vanessa regularly speaks on the topic of media bias and polarization to a variety of audiences.
