On Jan. 27, 2024, Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar spoke to a group of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis in a speech delivered in her native Somali language. Her words were mistranslated almost overnight, and the faulty translation attributed to her burned through social media, leading to several of her House colleagues — notably, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer and Marjorie Taylor Greene — calling for her resignation. Our analysts took a closer look at media coverage of this issue in our 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.

Our analyst team took a closer look at several articles from various media outlets on this topic: “Greene moves to force vote on censuring Omar for Somalia remarks” from The Hill, “Republicans smeared Ilhan Omar over a faulty translation. Here’s what she really said.” from the Minnesota Reformer, “Greene seizes on a dubious social media attack to call for Omar’s deportation” from the Washington Post, “Somaliland official slams Rep. Ilhan Omar for ‘ethno-racist rhetoric’” from the Washington Times, “Noted neologist Marjorie Taylor Greene ready to deport her colleague” from Boing Boing, and “Rep. Ilhan Omar Represents Everything Wrong With America’s Immigration System” from The Federalist. The bias and reliability scores for each of these articles can be found on our Topic of the Week page. We will be looking closer at the articles from Boing Boing and The Federalist.  

From all of the articles that we have rated from Boing Boing, our analysts have given it an aggregate score of -13.39 for bias, giving it a “strong left” lean, and 22.76 for reliability, placing it in the “selective or incomplete story/unfair persuasion/propaganda” layer of the chart. This week’s article was rated at 21.67 for reliability and -27.33 for bias, placing it much farther to the left than usual, into the “hyper-partisan left” category.

The headline calls Greene a “neologist,” and a quick search of the term “neology” (“the use of a new word or expression or of an established word in a new or different sense” according to Merriam-Webster) gives us a glimpse into the rest of this article: an absolute rip against Marjorie Taylor Greene and her history of linguistic foibles. 

“After minting such concepts as ‘gazpacho police’ and the ‘peach tree dish,’ Georgia’s spork tongued Congressperson has honed in like a ‘Jewish Space Laser’ on a mistranslation of Representative Ilhan Omar’s remarks at a celebration of an election in the Puntland region of Somalia.” This article is a short but strong attack on MTG for asserting that Omar should be deported after skimming social media — but before getting the facts of the story. 

Our analysts have given The Federalist an aggregate score of 19.21 for bias, pushing it into the “hyper-partisan right” category, and 22.5 for reliability, placing it in the “selective or incomplete story/unfair persuasion/propaganda” layer of the chart. This week’s article was rated at 21 for bias and 21.67 for reliability, keeping within its normal boundaries.

This article is a knee-jerk response to the mistranslation of Omar’s speech, including her factually inaccurate “brag” that the U.S. government “will only do what Somalians in the U.S. tell them to do. They will do what we want and nothing else. They must follow our orders, and that is how we will safeguard the interest of Somalia. We Somalians must have the confidence in ourselves that we call the shots in the U.S.” 

The article is a love letter to tighter immigration control and stricter border policies, stating that “Omar herself is of course an antisemite and a radical leftist” who “appears to have no allegiance to her adopted country — a country that took her in, sheltered and protected her, provided a safe haven from the chaos and violence of her homeland, and elevated her to a position of power and influence.”

The remainder of the article reiterates talking points from the right on the need for border security that would “prevent the importation of a noncitizen class that would undercut and destabilize the republic,” just like our founders envisioned. There is no mention of the accurate translation, just the use of the initial social media mistranslation to use as a springboard.

For a deeper dive, the Minnesota Reformer ran an article that included a translation from a certified court interpreter and gave some additional cultural context to the incident.

These are just a few 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.