One thing has become apparent as we are bombarded with information about the upcoming election and recent natural disasters: You can’t believe everything you read. Inaccurate information and conspiracy theories are everywhere, especially online and on social media.

We often hear people say, “How are you supposed to know what to believe these days?” We can help.

The Ad Fontes Media analyst team has now fully rated more than 79,000 individual articles from websites across the political spectrum. They spend dozens of hours each week reading and analyzing them not only for bias, but also for reliability — how reliable is this particular online article or source in providing factual, verifiable information. (You can read about our analysis process here.)

All of these individual article scores are entered into our database, and a weighted average of these determines where an individual source falls on the Media Bias Chart®. This important work has resulted in more than 2,500 web/print sources being fully rated, with new sources added regularly.

Sources that are the most factful (full of facts rather than analysis or opinion or worse) can be found near the top when you look at our most recent Media Bias Chart® for web/print.

Of the 2,500 web/print sources our team has rated, only 120 of them are featured on October’s Static Media Bias Chart® because it’s impossible to put all of them in a single image (the logos would overlap and appear on top of one another, and the result would be an image that is impossible to read). A list of the 120 sources included this month is available on our website. 

Eleven sources make their debut on this month’s chart:

• California Globe
• Dogwood
• Jacksonville Journal-Courier
• Law Enforcement Today
• Scientific American
• Sky News Australia
• Spaceflight Now
• The Geller Report
• The Trace
• UNILAD
• Yahoo News

If your favorite news sources weren’t included on this month’s chart, you can search for them by using the Interactive Media Bias Chart® on the website or on the mobile app available for iPhone or Android. It’s free, but there are limits in terms of how many searches you can conduct per day and/or how much source data you can access. To get expanded access, you’ll need a News Nerd subscription. And to access ALL of it, you’ll need a News Nerd Pro subscription. Check out our subscription options here.

Check back later this month for monthly charts that focus on podcast/audio and TV/video sources. And if you want to stay informed on all of our work, join our free email list!