Hunter Biden surprised members of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committee after he appeared in the galley of their hearing on Jan. 10, with his lawyers and a documentary film crew in tow. The committee was meeting to discuss whether or not Hunter Biden should be held in contempt of Congress. Our analyst team took a deep dive into 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.

This week, the story (paraphrased from the Reuters article linked below) is that Hunter Biden made an unexpected appearance at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing where Republican lawmakers were pushing for a vote to hold him in contempt of Congress for not testifying in their impeachment inquiry targeting his father, President Joe Biden. House Republicans had issued a subpoena for Hunter Biden to appear for a closed-door deposition on Dec. 13 as part of the inquiry. Hunter Biden said he would be willing to testify publicly, but lawmakers rebuffed that offer, saying he needed to submit to a private deposition prior to any public testimony. 

Our analyst team took a closer look at several articles from various media outlets on this topic: “Why Hunter Biden showed up at the Capitol” from Axios, “Hunter Biden makes surprise appearance at House contempt hearing” from Reuters, “Comer: Marjorie Taylor Greene must’ve spooked Hunter, because he ‘ran out of there’ when she spoke” from Fox News, “House Oversight chairman argues the Bidens ‘are the ones that got played’ by Hunter’s surprise contempt hearing cameo” from New York Post, “Dem Lawmaker Puts GOP Hypocrisy On Full Display At Hunter Biden’s Hearing” from The Huffington Post, and “Hunter Biden calls the GOP’s bluff” from The Hill. The bias and reliability scores for each of these articles can be found on our Topic of the Week page. 

This week, we return to our normal blog format and examine two articles from this week’s article set, taking a deeper dive into what ratings they received and why. We will be looking at the articles from Fox News and from The Hill. 

The Hill has a minimally biased score overall, with a -1.54, and a “mix of fact reporting and analysis” reliability score of 42.62 overall. This week’s article, clearly labeled as an opinion piece at the top, scored quite differently, coming in at -18 for bias and 31 for reliability, or on the line between “skews left” and “hyper-partisan left” for bias and in the “opinion or wide variation in reliability” sections of the chart. 

The Hill article throws no punches. It begins with “Hunter Biden is standing up to Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and James Comer (R-Ky.) — the chairs of the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight and Accountability Committee — who are acting as MAGA surrogates for former President Trump’s election campaign… Hunter called the GOP’s bluff. And like bullies who are not used to being confronted, House Republicans were shocked… In the turmoil, Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz’s (D-Fla.) suggestion to have Hunter testify right then and there was not accepted.” 

The language and views employed here are strongly left-leaning, and the invocation of Democratic representatives is what lands this article’s bias score squarely between “strong left” and “hyper-partisan left.” The article digs deeper into the impeachment inquiry (see the Advanced article set from the Topic of the Week on Dec. 18) to back up the author’s claims that the impeachment itself is baseless, and underlines the thread that the Republican House members are operating in fear of what a public testimony could mean: “The message was clear — Hunter was ready to testify in public, and House Republicans could ask him anything.” The author presented an argument with supporting evidence for their opinion, albeit a non-neutral one.

Fox News’ (website) aggregate score for bias is 11.48 and for reliability is 36.27, placing it in the “skews right” category for bias and “analysis and/or opinion” for reliability. This week’s article scored 17.33 for bias and 33 for reliability, giving it just a little bit more bias than usual (in the “strong right” category) but keeping the reliability in the “analysis and/or opinion section” of the chart.

This article was shorter than its left-leaning counterpart and had a narrower focus, looking at only one moment. “House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky… told Fox News a pivotal point in the hearing was when Biden, who entered with attorneys Abbe Lowell and Kevin Morris, suddenly rose and left the room as the microphone was given to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga… As soon as [Hunter Biden] realized Marjorie Taylor Greene was going to ask him a question, they ran out of there. They knocked over people on the way out the door.” 

This article has one goal, which is to make a narrow assertion based on limited information: That the man in question is a coward, afraid to stand up to Greene, and undermining the Democratic argument that he was there to answer the Republican queries. This article lacks the context that The Hill article provided, and leads the reader to a certain conclusion, which is why analysts rated the article as “opinion and/or analysis.” 

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 our Topic of the Week.

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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.