When President Joe Biden dropped out of his re-election bid, plans for another presidential debate before the November election were up in the air. Vice President Kamala Harris won the Democratic nomination for president, and it was unclear at first whether Harris and former President Donald Trump would meet on the debate stage for a televised event.

Trump originally indicated he was pulling out of a previously scheduled debate on ABC. But last week, plans were finalized for Trump and Harris to debate on Sept. 10. Our analysts examined media coverage of the debate negotiations and reactions 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.

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 Harris-Trump debate announcement: “​​Trump recommits to a Sept. 10 debate and lashes out at Harris at news conference,” from AP; “Finally, Trump and Harris agree to debate. Great. Let’s get weird,” from AZ Central; “Trump Agrees to Debate, Rants About Harris During Unhinged Presser,” from Rolling Stone; “Trump Announces Proposed Debate Schedule, Challenging Harris To Three Contests,” from Daily Caller; “Harris and Trump agree to debate on ABC in September as race tightens,” from The Guardian; and “JUST IN: Trump and Kamala Harris Agree to ABC Debate on September 10,” from The Gateway Pundit.

The ratings for each of these articles can be found on the Ad Fontes Media website. Let’s take a closer look at the reporting from The Gateway Pundit and Rolling Stone.

The Gateway Pundit is a news and opinion website founded just before the 2004 presidential election. The website’s name refers to the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO, which was the home of founder/owner Jim Hoft, who writes many of the site’s articles. Our analysts have rated several articles from The Gateway Pundit and have given it an aggregate bias rating of 23.82 (hyper-partisan right) and a reliability rating of 14.99 (contains misleading info).

This week’s article received slightly higher ratings of 12 for bias (skews right) and 24.33 for reliability (opinion or other issues). The article is rather short and includes a few images of social media posts from Trump War Room, an account linked to the website donaldjtrump.com.

The article seems to give credit to Trump for answering questions from the press for over an hour when he made the announcement to debate Harris. Conversely, the article states, “Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has not answered a single question in 18 days since she forced Joe Biden off the ballot last month.”

While much of the article contains simple fact reporting, our analysts took issue with this sentence in particular, noting that both claims — that Harris has not answered a single question or that she forced Biden off the ballot — are inaccurate or misleading. This passage and the inclusion of social media posts from Trump’s campaign website led to the article’s “skews right” bias rating.

Rolling Stone is a magazine founded in 1967 that covers music, culture and politics. Our analysts have given the publication an aggregate bias score of -13.58 (strong left) and a reliability score of 26.09 (opinion or wide variation of reliability). This week’s article received a bias score of -14.67 (strong left) and a reliability score of 34 (analysis or other issues).

The bias of this article is evident at the start, with the headline stating that Trump “rants” about Harris during an “unhinged” press conference, and the subhead calling Trump “clearly frustrated.” But our analysts found that the entire article is “littered with the author’s opinions.”

The article includes many quotes from Trump during the press conference, but the author then immediately reacts to Trump’s words with passages like this, “The meteoric enthusiasm surrounding Harris has clearly rattled the Trump campaign.” And this one, which ends the article, “Regardless of whether Harris is currently holding press conferences, she seems to be doing quite well, and the former president clearly can’t stand it.”

The article contains several examples of biased language, such as calling Fox News Trump’s “preferred propaganda machine.” The author’s choice to negatively characterize Trump’s words and to defend Harris led to this article’s “strong left” bias score.

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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