The decision by the U.S. House of Representatives to launch an official impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden inspired much coverage in the media in recent days. Our analyst team looked closely at six examples of this coverage in this week’s Topic of the Week.

Each week, Ad Fontes Media chooses a widely covered trending news topic to share insight into how our analysts rank news coverage for the Media Bias Chart®. To do this, we select six articles reporting on the same story from different outlets to show how each treated the subject.

Once we choose a set of articles, pods of analysts with diverse political perspectives (one right leaning, one center, and one left leaning) read each article and use Ad Fontes Media’s content analysis methodology to determine its bias and reliability. These ratings inform the articles’ placement on that week’s special Media Bias Chart.

The articles rated by our analysts this week were “House panel votes to send Biden impeachment inquiry to floor: ‘No choice’” from New York Post, “House Republicans formalize impeachment inquiry into President Biden” from ABC News, “House approves impeachment inquiry into President Biden as Republicans rally behind investigation” from the AP, “The Biden impeachment inquiry’s shaky foundation” from Axios, “By modern standards, Biden should be impeached” from Newsweek, and “Why the GOP will likely rubber-stamp its fact-free Biden impeachment inquiry” from MSNBC. We will be looking at the articles from Newsweek and from MSNBC in this week’s blog.

Our analyst team has assigned Newsweek with an aggregate scores of 36.91 for reliability and -2.75 for bias (analysis or wide variation in reliability and middle or balanced bias). The Newsweek article this week was rated at 23 for reliability and 15.67 for bias (selective or incomplete story/unfair persuasion/propaganda for reliability and a strong right lean for bias). This is quite outside of the norm for Newsweek!

This article was authored by Mark Weaver, the former deputy attorney general of Ohio and an occasional contributor of right-leaning opinion pieces for the usually middle/balanced outlet. He takes a law scholar’s view of this topic, arguing that the House of Representatives has the constitutional right to determine what a “high crime or misdemeanor” looks like for the highest office in the U.S.

The article quotes Gerald Ford as having said, “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.” This is an interesting take on what seems to be the recent political trend of holding impeachment hearings.

The strong right lean of this article comes with its musings on impeachments, asserting that, “Even accounting for partisan motivation, there’s considerable evidence Joe Biden has abused power and more substantiation will likely be revealed in upcoming hearings,” and, “It’s well established that then-Vice President Biden conditioned a $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine on firing the prosecutor investigating Burisma, Hunter Biden’s client and benefactor.”

Neither of these statements has been conclusively proven. Our analysts summed up this article’s sentiments as “subjective opinion against Biden that ends on misleading statements not rooted in fact.”

The MSNBC website has been rated overall as 34.7 for reliability and -14.23 for bias (analysis or wide variation in reliability and a strong left bias). This week’s MSNBC article was rated at 30.33 for reliability and -17.67 for bias. These scores are closer to the norms than the Newsweek piece.

This article was authored by Hayes Brown, an international relations scholar who writes opinion pieces for MSNBC. It sifts through the Republican movements toward impeachment so far and makes some dour predictions for its future: “Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is plowing ahead despite the risk of a failed vote. He’s banking on his slim majority holding together in the name of asking Biden questions.”

Brown does agree that “little precedent has been established when it comes to presidential impeachment inquiries” but also points out that there has not yet been conclusive evidence of Biden misusing his office for personal or familial gain despite the effort put forth by the Republicans interested in it. “There’s been no evidence that shows Biden used the office of the vice presidency or the presidency improperly to enrich himself or his relatives. But when has something like a lack of evidence ever stopped congressional Republicans from making allegations of corruption?”

These are just two examples of the thousands of articles our analysts have rated for reliability and bias. If you want a look at the larger media landscape or are curious to see how our analysts have rated your favorite sources, head on over to our website and check out the resources we have available. And don’t forget to come back for another examination of the Topic of the Week in 2024!

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Sara Webb is a cybersecurity consultant and former high school librarian from Philadelphia, PA. She holds an M.S. in Informatics and an M. Ed in School Library and Information Technology, and has been a media literacy educator for over a decade. Sara started with Ad Fontes Media in July 2020 as a Media Analyst, and she currently continues in that role and as in-house Media Literacy Specialist. When not engrossed in media literacy projects, Sara can be found at the barn with her ex-racehorse Homer, or training her corgis for dog agility competitions.