Factcheck Org Media Bias Allsides

The busy work of cataloguing news in the hope of saving humanity from our conspiratorial online disinformation hell. One morning in November, I logged on for a Google Meet with AllSides, a company on a crusade to fight bias in the media. Henry Brechter, the editor in chief, is twenty-eight; brown hair tufted out of his Red Sox hat. “We’ll try and go around the different corners of the internet,” he said. The team tossed out recent news items: Zohran Mamdani, the long-shot Democratic Socialist candidate, won New York’s mayoral election; Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker, announced that she would not run for reelection; a... But before getting into the substance of the stories, everyone felt compelled to tell me about their personal political persuasions.

“I’m from Boston and I have a center bias,” Brechter said. His staff of writers and editors chimed in. Evan Wagner: “I live in DC and I have a lean-left bias.” Beth Hicks: “I’m in Virginia and I’m right-biased.” Emily Allen: “I live in Nashville, I’m originally from Southern California, and I’m left-biased.”... Staff members are sought out for variety in terms not only of ideology—employees are quizzed regularly on their political views—but also life experience. Brechter is one of the only staff members with a journalism degree. One staff member is a volunteer firefighter; another is an adjunct English professor.

An AllSides editor named Andy Gorel (“center bias”) told me, “What drives our team’s strength is we’re a bunch of normies.” In the meeting, Wagner said that when he started at AllSides, “there were a lot of times when I would hear an opinion, and like, no offense to any of you, I would say,... Then he continued: since starting his work at AllSides, he said, “I understand the worldviews of a lot more people now.” His journey is a manifestation of the utopian AllSides dream: the site wants... “Everyone imagines the demon on the other side of the keyboard,” Brechter told me. But most people arguing online “just want the best for their family.” He described the average AllSides reader as “someone who understands that there’s an issue with the media but is still unsure about... The site was established in 2012 by John Gable (right bias) and Scott McDonald (center bias), who met while working at a cybersecurity company called Check Point Software.

They realized they shared a serious concern about how tech was transforming media. Gable had been an early employee at Netscape, the Web browser credited with introducing the modern internet to the masses. Looking at the trajectory of the internet, it was as though “our son went off the rails,” he recalled. “Search engines, algorithms, social media: our thinking has been manipulated horribly.” AllSides was meant to be a “disrupter,” he said. “We’re bringing power back to regular people to think for themselves.” And not just people: “Nonprofits, news organizations, government institutions—we can be a tool for them to make better decisions.” Library Hours Call 864.592.4764 Text 864.756.8008 Ask a Question Make an Appointment

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