Perhaps you've seen it.
- Click here for Ad Fontes Media.
How reliable is it?
About 30 paid analysts rate articles for Ad Fontes. Listed on the company’s website, they represent a range of experience — current and former journalists, educators, librarians and similar professionals. The company recruits analysts through its email list and references and vets them through a traditional application process. Hired analysts are then trained by Otero and other Ad Fontes staff.
To start review sessions, a group of coordinators composed of senior analysts and the company’s nine staffers pulls articles from the sites being reviewed. They look for articles listed as most popular or displayed most prominently.
Part of the Ad Fontes analyst political bias test. The test asks analysts to rank their political bias on 18 different policy issues.
Ad Fontes administers an internal political bias test to analysts, asking them to rank their left-to-right position on about 20 policy positions. That information allows the company to attempt to create ideological balance by including one centrist, one left-leaning and one right-leaning analyst on each review panel. The panels review at least three articles for each source, but they may review as many as 30 for particularly prominent outlets, like The Washington Post, Otero said. More on their methodology, including how they choose which articles to review to create a bias rating, can be found here on the Ad Fontes website.
When they review the articles, the analysts see them as they appear online, “because that’s how people encounter all content. No one encounters content blind,” Otero said. The review process recently changed so that paired analysts discuss their ratings over video chat, where they are pushed to be more specific as they form ratings, Otero said.
Individual scores for an article’s accuracy, the use of fact or opinion, and the appropriateness of its headline and image combine to create a reliability score. The bias score is determined by the article’s degree of advocacy for a left-to-right political position, topic selection and omission, and use of language.
To create an overall bias and reliability score for an outlet, the individual scores for each reviewed article are averaged, with added importance given to more popular articles. That average determines where sources show up on the chart.
