The U.S. House of Representatives voted today to expel Rep. George Santos of New York. The media coverage leading up to this historic vote was broad and varied, and the Ad Fontes Media analyst team took a closer look at a handful of these articles 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 article set took a peek into some of the articles written about the alleged activities of Rep. George Santos. The public scandal that wandered into the House of Representatives when George Santos was elected grows bigger by the day. He denied performing as a drag queen in Brazil in 2008, he falsified large chunks of his resume, he is purported to have stolen money meant to treat a veteran’s dog, claimed that his mother died in the 9/11 attacks, and most recently, he spent campaign money on Botox, designer items, and luxury vacations with his husband, according to an investigation from the House Ethics Committee.

Despite calls for his resignation, Santos refused to leave his position, instead choosing to lambast the Ethics Committee until the vote that was held this morning, Dec. 1, 2023. In an historic conclusion, the House of Representatives voted to expel Rep. George Santos 311-114.

The articles rated by our analysts were “George Santos has epic meltdown on three-hour livestream as he calls Ethics Committee chairman a ‘p***y’ and accuses ‘hypocrite’ colleagues of getting drunk before votes and cheating on spouses with lobbyists” from Daily Mail, “Why it kind of feels like George Santos is winning” from MSNBC, “Santos lashes out at colleagues as he stares down expulsion” from Axios, “Nearly 60 new House members say they will vote to expel Santos” from Politico, “Corrupt self-promoter George Santos faces expulsion from US House of Representatives” from WSWS, and “NY Republican Rep. George Santos to Retire After House Ethics Committee Finds Him Guilty of Campaign Donations Violations – What About the Crooked Democrats?” from The Gateway Pundit. The bias and reliability scores for each of these articles can be found on our Topic of the Week page. 

In this week’s blog, we examine the most polarized reactions from each political side in this article set: WSWS from the left and The Gateway Pundit from the right.

Ad Fontes Media has rated enough articles from World Socialist Web Site, or WSWS, to give it an overall reliability rating of 30.26 and a bias rating of -25.95, placing it in the categories of “opinion or wide variation in reliability,” and in “hyper-partisan left” in terms of bias. This article garnered a score of 27.67 for reliability and -30 for bias, placing it in the opinion or wide variation in reliability and most extreme left categories. Neither of these ratings are far off from its averages.

This article is interesting in that the United States does not have a Socialist party, which might have altered the bias score. We benchmark bias based on the policy positions and actions of contemporary elected officials in the U.S. It is not just anything that elected officials believe. This article calls out the Republican party, starting with Trump, for ignoring ethical dilemmas and criminal activity in favor of winning, and to make this point it uses remarks by Santos on X.

He wrote, “I think every inch of this country at this point should be mapped out again and completely checked. I don’t care if we go into a police state for a couple of months” when calling for an investigation of the people who waved Palestinian flags at recent Israeli protests in the name of national security. The outburst “was undoubtedly directed toward the fascist base of the Republican Party,” and though it was posted in October, it was not reported on until the end of November, brushed under the rug by the advanced stage of “Republican transformation into a fascist party.” 

You are probably thinking, so where does the socialist part come in? Well, the second part of that last sentiment about the Republicans transforming into a fascist party was followed by “and the Democrats’ response to this development is to double down on their search for common ground with the fascists.” In addition, an entire paragraph in the article decried that “Santos is only the crudest expression of the corruption that permeates the capitalist two-party system, with Democrats and Republicans alike spending most of their time fundraising for the next election cycle and shamelessly selling themselves to the highest bidders. This whole episode points to the utter decay of the two-party system of capitalist politics, which attracts the most backward and selfish individuals.”

The attacks on Santos and the Republican party that paved a smooth road for his entrance into the House are clear, but so, too, is the author’s assertion that everything is broken, not just Republicans.

The Gateway Pundit is rated overall at 15.17 for reliability and 24.15 for bias, making its home on the chart in the “contains misleading info” and “hyper-partisan right” categories. This week’s article was scored at 7.33 for reliability and 29 for bias, placing it in the “contains inaccurate/fabricated info” category of reliability while it toes the bias line between “hyper-partisan right” and “most extreme right.” While the bias score for this article is within five points of the average, the reliability category is half of its usual score, and for good reason. 

This short article begins with, “It looks like Democrats and RINOs finally got their scalp!” which is as inflammatory as it is in bad taste. This article also claims that the results of the Santos investigation by the House Ethics Committee “sounds a lot like most politicians in the swamp today. Hello, Maxine Waters? What about Marxist Cori Bush and her payments to her lover for ‘security’?”

This is a well-used diversionary tactic, and this article leans into it. “So the crooked Democrats will not even be investigated but Republicans will toss this freshman conservative lawmaker to the ghouls in the DOJ. What a disgrace!” This author is attempting to make a false equivalency between Democrats and Republicans in this instance so the reader does not pay attention to the claims against Santos.

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.

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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.