I wanted to give a few updates on what is happening with the website. First, we have added another reviewer which is allowing us to add 5 and sometimes more sources per day. As of a few hours ago we added our 1,800th source. We have many to go as our pending list continues to grow. I want to clarify again, that we do not review everything sent to us. It must be a media source that is getting a reasonable amount of traffic and has something to do with politics, science, conspiracies, pseudoscience, fake news etc.
Many people have requested that we create a list of highly factual media sources. We can do that, but as of today that would be 870 sources. We are trying to figure out a good way to help filter the factuality of media. Perhaps a dedicated search that only looks at factual reporting? Or simply color coding the links on each bias page? Feedback would be great! This is being discussed and will be a feature, hopefully in the near future. For those who have requested this, we heard you and we are working on a way within our budget and limited technical skill to make this happen.
We have become huge fans of Reporters Without Borders, to help with our research, especially with foreign media. On most new sources added you will see a World Press Freedom Rank by country of origin for that source. Ie. USA 43/180. Which means the USA has moderate press freedom compared to most countries out of the 180 on the list. This will help to determine how much influence the state has on media. We will also be going back and adding this to all sources on the website that are credible and have some sort of press credentialing. This will be a slow ongoing process. For example, the Washington Post would get the USA ranking and The BBC would get the UK ranking, etc. We will not be adding this to blog or fringe sources, only those that are somewhat mainstream and beholden to state standards.
That is all for now. Just wanted to keep you updated.
Dave Van Zandt
Left vs. Right Bias: How we rate the bias of media sources
Hi, I am myself a RSF member, but I use raw numbers out of 100 instead of the rank as it in my opinion reflects the reality of press freedom. Maybe we could use both.
Thanks for the feedback. We feel it is simpler to just list the rank vs. the score, which would require a detailed explanation.
Hi, thanks for the reply.
I forgot to say that in a extreme testing scenario where every country had a “satisfactory situation” or better (0 to 25 points out of 100), or every country had a “difficult situation” or worse (35 to 100 points out of 100), then the ranks would lose meaning.