How the Media Polarized Us

This is actually quite good. Other than a small quibble about Maddow (I feel like she’s coasting on her pre-Trump reputation for objectivity) I can’t fault anything on here.

TMZ skews left? Didn't they explicitly catch-and-kill a bunch of stories just to help Trump win?

edit: see grandchild post, after looking for references they just used other pro-Trump behavior, not catch-and-kill that I could find quickly.

I've seen variations of this chat, but never seen (what appears to be) the original source. From their methodology section[1]:

>Q: How does Ad Fontes Media generate the scores for each news source on the Media Bias Chart?

>A: We generate overall news source scores based on scores of individual articles (in the case of online news sources) or episodes (in the cases of podcasts, radio, TV, and video-based sources). Each individual article and episode is rated by at least three human analysts with balanced right, left, and center self-reported political viewpoints. That is, at least one person who has rated the article self-identifies as being right-leaning, one as center, and one as left-leaning. Articles and episodes are rated in three-person live panels conducted in shifts over Zoom. Analysts first read each article and rate them on their own, then immediately compare scores. If there are discrepancies in the scores, they discuss and adjust scores if necessary. The three analysts’ ratings are averaged to produce the overall article rating. Sometimes articles are rated by larger panels of analysts for various reasons–for example, if there are outlier scores, the article may be rated by more than three analysts.

This seems woefully inadequate for use in generating any kind of objective "view from nowhere" plot. I appreciate that they're being transparent about how they're doing this and do they go on to talk about how their own biases of course exist in their ratings. But the (rather convenient) bell curve right off the bat is highly suspect to me. Again, I appreciate that they're being transparent, but I wouldn't use this for anything but showing how much modern media sucks.

[1] https://adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news-sources/