We’re back with another analysis showing that popularity does not necessarily equal quality when it comes to media consumption, according to data compiled by Ad Fontes Media. This time, let’s take a look at podcasts.
As we explained last month, more and more people are getting their news from podcasts, and YouTube recently reported 1 billion monthly podcast users. Podcasts are something you listen to, like radio, rather than something you watch, so it might seem odd that people access them on a video platform like YouTube. But watching a podcast on YouTube can be similar to watching the host of a TV news show explain information and interview guests, so it’s easy to understand why millions of people are comfortable with this format.
YouTube now releases a weekly list of its most popular podcast shows in the U.S. Only some of these podcasts focus on news (others are about true crime, sports, etc.). Therefore, many of them have not been analyzed by our team.
Looking at the top 25 shows from May 5-11, we found that nine of them have been fully rated by our team of analysts. Those nine shows, in order of their popularity on YouTube, are:
- The Joe Rogan Experience
- The MeidasTouch Podcast
- This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
- Shawn Ryan Show
- Timcast IRL
- The Tucker Carlson Show
- The Megyn Kelly Show
- Lex Fridman Podcast
- 60 Minutes
Two of these shows — 60 Minutes and The Tucker Carlson Show — are considered by Ad Fontes to be video sources, but YouTube classifies them as podcasts. Here’s where these nine shows fall on the Media Bias Chart®:
As you can see, none of these podcasts fall within the green box of the chart. Those that do are recommended by our team to provide minimally biased and reliable, fact-based information.
The May version of the Podcast/Audio Media Bias Chart® released today includes 48 podcasts in total, and 11 of those are in the green box.
- Advisory Opinions
- CBC News: The World This Hour
- CBS News Roundup
- CNN Political Briefing
- First Things Podcast
- Somebody’s Gotta Win with Tara Palmeri
- StarTalk Radio
- The McCarthy Report
- The World and Everything In It
- UNBIASED Politics
- UnCommon Law
This is only a sample of the podcasts we’ve rated. More podcasts fall within the green box, and we’ll feature those on charts in the future.
We choose a selection of podcasts to include on each month’s static media bias chart because it’s impossible to show all of them in one image (see the list of all 48 shows on the May chart here). In order to make the logos as large and as readable as possible, we have magnified a portion of the chart and removed portions around the edges that contain no sources.
Six podcasts are included on the chart this month for the first time (notice that two of these fall within the green box):
- CBS News Roundup
- Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
- Maiden Mother Matriarch with Louise Perry
- The Lance Wallnau Show
- This Week In White Supremacy
- UNBIASED Politics
Don’t see your favorite podcast on the May 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. 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.
For expanded access, please consider a News Nerd subscription, which gives you the ability to search all sources we’ve rated and provides many additional benefits.
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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.