On July 1, a Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) majority ruled that presidents have immunity from prosecution when carrying out “official acts.” The decision read: “Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority… and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”

The decision brought cheers from former President Donald Trump’s staff and supporters on the right while those on the left wondered about the broader implications of the ruling. As Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissenting opinion, “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

Our team examined media coverage of the court ruling from across the political spectrum 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.

Using those sets 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 examined the following articles about the decision: “What Supreme Court’s immunity ruling means for Trump’s cases and, potentially, future presidents” from Politifact, “How the Supreme Court became a political battlefield” from the BBC, “The President Can Now Assassinate You, Officially” from The Nation, “‘All the evidence is about to come out’: Legal experts say SCOTUS ruling could backfire on Trump” from Salon, “‘The American People Should Dissent, I Dissent’ – President Biden Blasts Supreme Court’s ‘Dangerous Precedent’” from ZeroHedge, and “FACT CHECK: Biden’s 5 Lies About the Supreme Court’s Ruling on Trump’s Immunity” from The Daily Signal.

The ratings for each of these articles can be found on the website. In this blog we will take a deeper dive into the reporting from Salon and The Daily Signal.

Salon is a news and opinion website created in 1995 and was one of the first all-digital media outlets. Our analysts have rated several articles from this source and gave it an aggregate bias score of -14.16 (strong left) and reliability score of 32.43 (analysis or wide variation in reliability). Our analysts gave this week’s article a score of -14.33 for bias (strong left) and 27 for reliability (opinion or other issues).

The political slant of this article is not hard to discern. “A Supreme Court that had just declared it a crime to be poor and homeless ruled that Donald Trump, previously and perhaps soon once again the world’s most powerful man, cannot be prosecuted for anything that a president’s lawyer (or conservative jurist) might spin as an ‘official act.’ Legal experts say the decision effectively legalized executive criminality…”

The article continues by adding a “consolation prize” for the left related to one of Trump’s pending court cases: “U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan can … schedule time in court where special counsel Jack Smith could lay out his whole case, complete with testimony from witnesses,” to determine if Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were official presidential acts, putting all of the evidence out for the public to see ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

The article ends with this: “…at least we’ll have this: No one, be they Samuel Alito or a swing voter in Wisconsin, will be able to honestly claim that they didn’t know what they were voting for and all that’s at stake in November.” This article demonstrates a left bias for its strong stance against Trump, the ruling, and the Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump that helped make that decision.

The Daily Signal is a website that focuses on policy and political news, as well as conservative commentary. It is published by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. From all articles rated from this source, our analysts have given it an aggregate bias score of 17.73 (strong right) and reliability score of 23.01 (selective or incomplete story/unfair persuasion/propaganda). Our analysts gave this week’s article a score of 14.33 for bias (strong right) and 24 for reliability (opinion or other issues).

This article is a direct attack on President Biden’s remarks following the SCOTUS decision. It states: “‘For all…for all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do,’” Biden claimed. This accusation is objectively false.”

There are several other examples pulled from Biden’s remarks that the article asserts are false, ending with, “Biden has not respected the limits of presidential power, however, and the Supreme Court has called him out on it, proving that the president is not a king. When Biden sought to unilaterally ‘forgive’ billions in student debt, the Supreme Court struck down his first attempt. He responded by issuing executive orders to dismiss even more debt.”

This is a right-leaning article for its attacks on President Biden and its full support of the six conservative judges who handed down this decision.

These are just two examples of the tens of 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, visit 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.