Why Measuring Reliability and Bias in Media Matters

A mere five months before the 2024 primaries begin in January, Americans are increasingly living in information bubbles of their own creation. While very real policy issues have historically divided voters, what’s unique about this moment is that Americans could be so divided on the actual facts. Shared facts make political debates productive; without them, our democratic system of government starts to falter, and that has consequences beyond our dysfunctional legislative branch. Fitch just downgraded the United States’ long-term debt due to the “steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years” as we stare down yet another threatened government shutdown over the debt limit.

How did this happen? Well, something else has happened over the last 20 years: the American news landscape has completely transformed with legacy national news organizations weakened and traditional local news eliminated or on life support. What we’re left with is a more partisan news landscape, fueled by engagement-hungry social platforms and business models that feed on division, demonize the opposition, and starve us of the actual facts that allow for reasoned debate.

Aside from the polls, there’s one place where this divide shows up starkly in the data: the reliability and bias of the media. When you rate media on a scale of reliability or factual accuracy and political bias, you get a pretty clear paradigm that helps understand what’s happening in society. Put simply, the more biased the media on the left or the right, the less reliable or accurate it becomes. Conversely, the less biased the media, the more reliable (and factual) it becomes.

How do we know this? It’s in the data. If you look at Ad Fontes Media’s Media Bias Chart, the long tail of left- and right-wing bias of the media is also generally the least-reliable content and this holds true whether it’s web content, video, TV, or podcasts.

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What’s also true is that the vast majority of what you might describe as false information or misinformation is either about a political topic or directed at political audiences. That’s because most of our current misinformation is intended to drive polarization. It finds receptive audiences where it can confirm or reinforce people’s closely-held political identities, and in turn “other” those with opposing points of view. That’s why nearly every conversation about misinformation leads to accusations of political bias.

I should pause here to say that there’s nothing about bias that is inherently bad. I am biased. You are biased. To be biased is to be human, whether you’re on the right, middle, or left (or conservative, centrist, liberal), these principles stem from the moral foundations that actually make us good people. That’s why it’s essential that rather than deny bias or write it off as a failing, we should acknowledge, measure, and understand it.

These principles subsequently inform our actions and policy positions, and while it’s critical that we debate the merits of these to solve problems as a society, that can only happen if the facts underlying the analysis or opinion are sound. That’s why it’s not enough to determine whether an argument or a piece of content is biased; you must also measure the “reliability” of content based on a measure of verified or verifiable facts versus unsupported assertions or opinion.

Once you measure both, something interesting happens, visually. Clusters of low-reliability content form at both ends of the political spectrum, and the farther right or left you go, the less reliable and factual content becomes. This is where hyper-partisan content takes us down into rabbit holes where facts are few and we dehumanize and vilify the other side. Because it focuses on speculation or predictions over facts, it stokes fear and other emotional drivers that attract us to this content. It’s addicting but tends to make us all a little edgy without actually informing us very well. That’s where the ability to have meaningful debate is lost.

Unfortunately it’s also true that it’s a model that delivers both for media outlets as well as social platforms that distribute that content, eroding our discourse and poisoning our politics. It’s also likely turning people away from the news altogether. A global study from the Reuters Institute at Oxford University found 1 in 10 Americans tune out the news entirely and 34% of men and 41% of women are actively avoiding it.

I’m a newshound who measures the reliability and bias in news for a living, but even I can identify with these feelings. But the answer isn’t to detach from the news; rather, it’s to have the resources to better curate your media diet. If you find yourself getting stressed and anxious from following the “news,” take a break from outlets trading on speculation, get your information from sources that focus on facts, and formulate your own analysis of what it means.

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Democracy thrives on facts and reasoned debate, and high quality news content is out there if you know where to look. It is important to understand the political bias of our misinformation if we hope to effectively combat it. And we must understand the reliability of our information if we ever hope to return to honest debate to resolve our political disagreements.

Ref: Source of the Ad Fontes Media’s Media Bias Chart