On May 30, 2024, Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime when a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star ahead of the 2016 election. After two days of deliberation, the 12-member jury pronounced Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts he faced.

Each side of the political spectrum reacted to the verdict just as you might expect: joy from the left, furious rebuttal from the right. Our team examined media coverage of this issue 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.

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 examined the following articles about the verdict published last week: “How Trump’s guilty verdict will impact the 2024 presidential election” from ABC News, “Trump says guilty verdict is a ‘scar’ on New York justice system, vows to ‘keep fighting’” from Fox News (website), “Donald Trump becomes first US president convicted of a crime” from Reuters, “GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS! Trump a Convicted Criminal” from Daily Beast, “The felon frontrunner: How Trump warped our politics” from Vox, and “POLL: Trump still favored to win presidential race despite indictments” from Trump.News.

The bias and reliability scores for each of these articles can be found on our Topic of the Week page. In this blog we will take a deeper dive into the reporting from the Fox News website and Vox.

The Fox News (website) posts news and information online 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and is the digital partner to the cable news channel with the same name. Founded in 1996, Fox News is owned by Fox News Media, part of the Fox Corporation created by Rupert Murdoch. The aggregate scores from this source from all articles rated by our analyst team are 11.61 for bias (skews right) and 35.24 for reliability (analysis or wide variation in reliability). This week’s article was rated at 13.33 for bias (strong right) and 35.33 for reliability (analysis or other issues).

Fox’s article focused entirely on Trump’s reaction to the verdict, mostly repeating that the entire affair was rigged and unfair. In addition, it states: “Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Digital that ‘crooked Joe Biden and the Democrats confined President Trump to a courtroom for more than eight hours a day for more than six weeks and he’s still winning’” [in the polls].

As a final taunt, the article describes that Leavitt “told Fox News Digital that Trump ‘generated billions of dollars in earned media coverage throughout the trial; hosted massive rallies and impromptu campaign stops in New York and beyond; increased his lead over crooked Joe Biden in the polls and raised more money than Biden and the Democrats in the month of April — not even a witch hunt trial could slow him down — in fact, it only made him stronger.'”

The reference to “crooked Joe” throughout the article is a direct attack on Joe Biden, indicating a strong right bias. So, too, are the lack of details surrounding why the trial was taking place in the first place. It is hard to be fair and balanced in an article when only one side is presented as fact. 

Vox is a news and opinion website founded in 2014 with a mission to “explain the news.” Founded by Ezra Klein, Melissa Bell and Matthew Yglesias, the site is part of Vox Media. The aggregate score from all articles rated from this source is -9.96 for bias (skews left) and 40.01 for reliability (mix of fact reporting and analysis). This week’s article was rated at -14.33 for bias (strong left) and 35 for reliability (analysis or other issues).

This article is a deep analysis into the effect that it says Trump, “the felon frontrunner,” has had on the rule of law. It states the Democrats’ position this way: “Since as far back as at least 2017, Democrats have dreamed about the moment when a jury would find Trump guilty of crimes. And on Thursday, a Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in the first degree. But now that that moment has arrived, the vibes are all wrong.”

This article blames what it believes is diminished outrage about Trump being found guilty to the “robust right-wing media ecosystem peddling alternative narratives that Democrats are the corrupt ones …” It continues: “… over the past decade, the idea of having a major political figure in prosecutorial jeopardy has been normalized. First, we got used to Trump being under investigation and then under (quadruple) indictment. Now, Team Trump has successfully warped the rules of politics to the point where even a felony conviction may not matter.”

The article further blames the GOP, detailing previous impeachment efforts and the Mueller investigation, when Trump “mobilized his allies in Congress and in right-wing media to aggressively attack the investigators, portraying all scrutiny of his conduct as illegitimate …” Every time a scandal arose, “the right would unite behind Trump, shield him from consequences, and ensure he’d still be present in our politics after the storm passed.”

These attacks on Trump’s team, right-wing media and GOP lawmakers demonstrate a strong left bias.

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, 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.