University of Kwazulu-Natal

Methodology Media Bias Fact Check

Bonisiwe Shabane
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methodology media bias fact check

Starting in 2025, we have a new methodology that aims to assess media outlets’ ideological bias and factual reliability systematically. It uses a comprehensive, weighted scoring system to evaluate political, social, and journalistic dimensions. This approach ensures an accurate and transparent assessment of a source’s political alignment and commitment to factual reporting, providing readers with a better understanding of media credibility and bias. (All reviewed and re-reviewed sources are subject to this methodology beginning Jan 1, 2025.) Bias is inherently subjective, and while no universally accepted scientific formula exists to measure it, our methodology uses objective indicators to approximate and represent bias. Each evaluated source is placed on a bias scale, visually represented by a yellow dot, to indicate its position.

This is complemented by a “Detailed Report” that explains the source’s characteristics and the reasoning behind its bias rating. While this updated methodology reduces the influence of a strictly U.S.-centric political spectrum, it remains primarily tailored to the political landscape of the United States. This ensures that evaluations are relevant to a significant audience while acknowledging that some biases in the U.S. context may not apply exactly in other countries where terms like “Liberal” may have a different meaning. Readers should consider this when comparing sources with political systems from other countries. For example, a left-leaning source looks like this:

A strongly right-leaning source looks like this: Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) is a long-running site that catalogs more than 3,900 media outlets and publishes daily fact-check compilations and bias ratings; MBFC says it uses a structured methodology updated in 2025 to... Academic work has often used MBFC’s ratings and found strong correlation with independent measures like NewsGuard and some fact-check datasets, though the site’s methodology and classifications have also been criticized in scholarly discussion [3]... 1. What MBFC is and what it publishes — a busy media watchdog Media Bias/Fact Check operates as a public-facing database and news site that lists thousands of media sources, posts daily “vetted” fact-check roundups and media-industry items, and offers bias and factualness evaluations of outlets [1]...

The site runs frequent items such as “Daily Vetted Fact Checks,” “Media News Daily,” and weekly quizzes to promote media literacy [7] [8]. MBFC also curates fact-checks from other organizations and states it reviews those items before republication [5] [9]. 2. How MBFC says it rates outlets — new 2025 methodology MBFC publicly documents a revised methodology introduced in 2025 that it says uses a comprehensive, weighted scoring system to evaluate political, social and journalistic dimensions and to make ratings more systematic and transparent; the... 1, 2025 are subject to that approach [2].

MBFC’s own “MBFC Ratings: By The Numbers” page explains the site’s goal of reducing subjective influence and addresses dataset effects such as a concentration of submitted right‑leaning sources [4]. The initial focus of the Media Bias Detector is to showcase real-time dashboards of what we deemed most important and tractable about what is being produced in the news this week. Initially, we aim to analyze 10 online newspapers: Associated Press News, Breitbart News, CNN, Fox News, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington... We chose these publications for their mix of reach and agenda-setting influence, where we plan to add more publications going forward. We look at each publisher’s homepage five times daily, at 6 AM, 10 AM, 2 PM, 6 PM, and 10 PM EST. Then, we use article placement on the homepage to identify the top 20 most prominent articles displayed to readers.

We assign position on the page as a combination of: distance from the top, size of the font, and inclusion and size of figures. Currently, we disregard content that does not focus on text, such as videos, podcasts, and photo galleries. Next, we recover the article text, title, and date of publication. We preprocess the text beforehand to ensure superfluous text is not passed into the large language model. We remove advertisements, direct mentions of the publisher outside the context of the story, and repetitive phrases that are irrelevant to the article (e.g. “Listen 5 minutes”, “Click Here for More Information”, “Enter your email address”).

We are continuing to grow this dictionary of boilerplate phrases as we collect more data. Next, we use GPT to generate labels for each document. The labels are generated at two levels: the article level and the sentence level. For simpler tasks, such as determining the topic, we employ GPT-3.5 Turbo, while for more complex tasks, we use GPT-4o. In the following sections, we summarize the list of extracted features and provide the exact prompts used for each task. TRUST ME is a feature-length documentary exploring human nature, information technology, and the need for media literacy to help people trust one another, bring them together and create...

Berklee Film Series Presents: Trust Me (10/18/2024) A conversation with the film's Impact Producer, Rosemary Smith: An interactive Media Bias Chart to help navigate and understand news source biases. Analysts come from a wide political spectrum and follow a careful, robust methodology to rate the news. You do not need to create an account to use Berklee's account. If you are getting an error message try allowing third party cookies or refreshing your browser.

An interactive Media Bias Chart to help navigate and understand news source biases. Analysts come from a wide political spectrum and follow a careful, robust methodology to rate the news. You do not need to create an account to use Berklee's account. If you are getting an error message try allowing third party cookies or refreshing your browser. Use this section of the guide to find a list of fact-checking resources. Contact UsLibrary AccessibilityUO Libraries Privacy Notices and Procedures

1501 Kincaid Street Eugene, OR 97403 P: 541-346-3053 F: 541-346-3485 Okay, let's break down Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC). Here's a comprehensive overview, covering what they are, their methodology, their reputation, criticisms, and how to interpret their ratings. I'll organize it into sections for clarity. MBFC uses a multi-faceted approach to assess bias and factual reporting. Here's a breakdown of their rating system:

MBFC has faced several criticisms, which are important to consider: 5. How to Interpret MBFC Ratings & Use Them Effectively 6. Alternatives & Complementary Resources This fact-check may be outdated.

Consider refreshing it to get the most current information. Research from 2024–2025 shows that media bias can be measured with increasing objectivity by combining computational methods, large-scale annotation pipelines, and human-guided frameworks; however, methodological choices, label design, and dataset limitations shape what “bias”... Recent frameworks leverage Large Language Models and scalable scraping to generate structured annotations across political lean, tone, and framing, producing reproducible metrics while exposing trade-offs around annotation reliability and class imbalance that condition conclusions... 1. New tools are promising but not definitive—what the latest studies actually claim Contemporary work frames bias detection as a multi-label, scalable task, arguing that transformers and LLMs improve detection performance and enable broader taxonomies of bias such as selection, framing, tone, and political lean.

The January 2025 study presents a multi-bias detection approach using LLMs to create datasets and labels that capture diverse bias types, claiming improved coverage over single-label systems while flagging annotation reliability issues [2]. The March 2024 systematic review identified 17 distinct forms of bias and documented that transformer architectures outperform older RNN approaches, reinforcing a technological trend rather than a settled measurement standard [1]. 2. Scale and automation reshape what “objective” measurement looks like

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Starting In 2025, We Have A New Methodology That Aims

Starting in 2025, we have a new methodology that aims to assess media outlets’ ideological bias and factual reliability systematically. It uses a comprehensive, weighted scoring system to evaluate political, social, and journalistic dimensions. This approach ensures an accurate and transparent assessment of a source’s political alignment and commitment to factual reporting, providing readers with ...

This Is Complemented By A “Detailed Report” That Explains The

This is complemented by a “Detailed Report” that explains the source’s characteristics and the reasoning behind its bias rating. While this updated methodology reduces the influence of a strictly U.S.-centric political spectrum, it remains primarily tailored to the political landscape of the United States. This ensures that evaluations are relevant to a significant audience while acknowledging tha...

A Strongly Right-leaning Source Looks Like This: Media Bias/Fact Check

A strongly right-leaning source looks like this: Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC) is a long-running site that catalogs more than 3,900 media outlets and publishes daily fact-check compilations and bias ratings; MBFC says it uses a structured methodology updated in 2025 to... Academic work has often used MBFC’s ratings and found strong correlation with independent measures like NewsGuard and some fact-...

The Site Runs Frequent Items Such As “Daily Vetted Fact

The site runs frequent items such as “Daily Vetted Fact Checks,” “Media News Daily,” and weekly quizzes to promote media literacy [7] [8]. MBFC also curates fact-checks from other organizations and states it reviews those items before republication [5] [9]. 2. How MBFC says it rates outlets — new 2025 methodology MBFC publicly documents a revised methodology introduced in 2025 that it says uses a ...

MBFC’s Own “MBFC Ratings: By The Numbers” Page Explains The

MBFC’s own “MBFC Ratings: By The Numbers” page explains the site’s goal of reducing subjective influence and addresses dataset effects such as a concentration of submitted right‑leaning sources [4]. The initial focus of the Media Bias Detector is to showcase real-time dashboards of what we deemed most important and tractable about what is being produced in the news this week. Initially, we aim to ...