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®. For this Topic of the Week we looked at coverage of the devastating wildfires in Maui, Hawaii.

For every Topic of the Week, we select six articles about the same topic from different outlets to compare their coverage. 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.

For the Maui wildfire coverage, we chose articles from CBS News, The Daily Signal, Washington Examiner, Common Dreams, Insider and HealthNews. Our analysts found the news coverage from each of these sources to be highly reliable with minimal or balanced bias. There were two exceptions: Common Dreams and The Daily Signal. Let’s take a closer look at coverage by these two sources.

The Common Dreams article, titled “As 93 Confirmed Dead, Locals Fear Lahaina Rebuild Dominated by Rich Outsiders,” was rated by our analysts to have a -15 bias score and a 30 reliability score. When determining the bias rating, our analysts noted language such as “climate-wrecking fossil fuel companies” and a quote referring to “the original Big Five oligarchy in Hawaii — which is the first five missionary families who control our government, rich, white, right-wing families.” This language that blames fossil fuels and the “oligarchy” is often used in liberal arguments, and our analysts put the bias rating for this article firmly in the “Strong Left” category.

When looking at the reliability score, our analysts noted several opinion statements without facts to support them. These begin with the article’s subhead, “Disaster capitalism will happen yet again unless they act proactively” and continues within the article by stating the wildfires were “enabled” by the fossil-fuel companies and a quote stating, “The colonial speculation of disaster capitalism is happening right now in Lahaina.” These statements are speculative, not fact-based, leading our analysts to put the Common Dreams article in the “Opinion or Wide Variation in Reliability” portion of the chart.

Now, let’s look at coverage from The Daily Signal: “Deadly Hawaii Fires Are Result of Political and Policy Failures — Not Climate Change.” Our analyst team gave this article a 21 bias score and 26 reliability rating. Our analysts detected bias immediately in the headline and by other similar references in the article, such as “As with all disasters — man-made or natural — the Left never lets a crisis go to waste. In this case, you guessed it, the message from Democrats and their media allies is that the fires are a result of climate change.” These statements that blame the other side and promote an “us vs. them” narrative show clear evidence of bias. In addition, political references such as this one about President Biden (“Apparently, he is on vacation again”) led analysts to give the article a “Hyper-Partisan Right” bias rating.

Looking at the article’s reliability rating, analysts detected several statements of opinion without facts to back them up. For example, this speculation: “…members of the far-left ‘Squad’ in Congress want to use this moment to declare a ‘climate emergency’ so they can start imposing their will on the country.” The article also concludes that wildfires are the result of many factors, and, “A responsible national and local press would be digging more into those issues than leaning into the usual climate change propaganda.” The analysts’ reliability score put this article in the “Opinion or Wide Variation in Reliability” category.

How would you rate these articles? We encourage you to give it a try, and compare your scores with those of our analysts. Each week we post two Topics of the Week — a Starter example for a less-experienced or younger audience, and an Advanced set for a more-experienced or older audience. We have many more resources for educators, as well!

See you next week for another Topic of the Week! 

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Beth Heldebrandt is a Media Research Specialist at Ad Fontes Media. She has 33 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.