"Fake News," Lies, and Misinformation

What news sources are left-leaning, centrist, or right-leaning?

There is no completely clear answer to this question because there is no one exact methodology to measure and rate the partisan bias of news sources.

Here are a couple of resources that can help:

Media Bias/Fact Check 

• evaluates not just news organizations, but all kinds of media and information producing entities, from think tanks to individual politicians
• provides two separate ratings, one for credibility (level of factual accuracy) and one for political bias

All Sides

• news site that presents multiple sources side by side in order to provide the full scope of news reporting
• Allsides Bias Ratings page allows you to filter news sources by political bias (left, center, right)
• rating system is based on crowd-sourcing, surveys, internal research, and use of third party sources

Public perception and attitudes towards news sources

The more detailed report, The Political Gap in Americans' News Sources, examines news usage by political party. "In many cases, supporters of the two main U.S. political parties are relying largely on different sources of news and information." In general, Republicans have lower levels of trust in national news organizations than Democrats, with those levels steadily declining since 2016. However, Republicans' trust in national news organizations and social media sites has increased somewhat since 2024.

Placing Some News Sources on the Political Spectrum

Here are a few examples of major news sources and their so-called "bias" based on ratings from AllSides and Media Bias/Fact Check (as of July 2025) and the reported level of trust from partisan audiences from the Pew Research Center.

Note that much of these ratings are based on surveys of personal perceptions. Consider that these may be impacted by the hostile media effect, wherein "partisans perceive media coverage as unfairly biased against their side" (source: Perloff, R. M. (2015). A three-decade retrospective on the hostile media effect. Mass Communication and Society, 18(6), 701-729. (U-M Library access)).

In the Middle

Common Ground: Centrist News Sources

• Sources are often described as "Center-Right" or "Center-Left"
• Sometimes news content is rated as "center" but opinion as right or left leaning, for the same news source
• Local news sources tend to have higher levels of trust with Americans of both parties and across all ages (Pew)

• WSJ news content has a bias rating of "Center" according to AllSides
• WSJ Opinion section is rated as "Lean Right"
• According to Pew, comparable percentages of both left and right leaning Americans trust the WSJ
• Media Bias/Fact Check rates WSJ as having "Right-Center" bias

Sources on the Left and Right

A consistent finding from the Pew surveys is that conservatives have a higher level of distrust overall of news sources and consume a narrower range of news sources. Left-leaning audiences trust and consume a broader range of news sources.

Therefore, there are more news sources that are rated or perceived as center-left/slight left leaning (especially mainstream sources); there are fewer news sources that are center-right. This represents the popular conservative discourse that the mainstream media has a liberal bias (and potential hostile media effect).

Towards the Left

These news sources are rated as "Lean Left" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly conservative and consistently conservative; and are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mixed, mostly liberal, and consistently liberal.

Far Left

These news sources are rated as "Left" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mostly liberal, consistently liberal; and are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly conservative, and consistently conservative.

Towards the Right

These news sources are rated as "Lean Right" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly liberal and consistently liberal; and are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mixed, mostly conservative, and consistently conservative. Note that this represents a further bias leaning than the "towards the left" sources. There are no direct parallels on the right.

Far Right

These news sources are rated as "Right" by Allsides. According to the Pew survey, they are more distrusted than trusted by people who are mostly liberal, consistently liberal; and are more trusted than distrusted by people who are mostly conservative, and consistently conservative.