Methodology
How Slantwise rates news outlets.
Slantwise rates news outlets on a five-point political-orientation scale using a panel of independent media-bias research organizations. This page documents how those ratings are produced, how disagreements are resolved, and how readers can challenge them.
The principle
Slantwise rates outlets, not individual articles. A source rating reflects an outlet's editorial tendency over time. Readers use the rating to know what perspective they are reading from before they begin, not to judge any single story in advance.
Slantwise's editorial position is that the framing of news should be visible. Coverage is shaped by which stories an outlet chooses to run, where they are placed, and the language used to describe them. Naming that shape is part of the reading.
How a story is built
Slantwise groups coverage of the same event into one story, then reads that story as a timeline. When the story takes a new turn, that development becomes a chapter, dated by when coverage of it actually began rather than when a cluster row was created.
Under each chapter, Slantwise shows one verbatim headline per side that covered it: left, lean-left, center, lean-right, and right. The headlines are selected and attributed, never written or summarized. When a side has no headline under a chapter, that side did not cover that turn of the story, and Slantwise leaves the space blank rather than filling it. The construction is mechanical and extractive throughout, so the shared spine stays a record of what was published, not an editorial retelling.
The rater panel
Slantwise does not produce original bias ratings. Ratings draw on independent rater organizations whose methodologies are public. Most outlets currently carry a single published rating; where more than one rater covers an outlet, their scores are aggregated:
- AllSidesMethodology ↗
Blind-survey methodology with editorial review across multi-partisan teams.
- Ad Fontes MediaMethodology ↗
The Media Bias Chart: content analysis scoring outlets on bias and reliability axes.
- Media Bias / Fact CheckMethodology ↗
Editorial assessment combining wording analysis, sourcing review, and factual-reporting history.
Where these raters distinguish between an outlet's news desk and opinion desk, Slantwise preserves the distinction on the source page. A reader can see, for example, that an outlet's news desk is rated centrist while its opinion desk is rated Lean Right, a distinction that a single-number summary would lose.
How disagreements resolve
Raters do not always agree. Slantwise reports the disagreement rather than hiding it, and assigns a confidence tier based on how the panel converges:
| Confidence | Rule |
|---|---|
| High | Three or more raters within 1 unit of each other |
| Medium | Two raters within 1 unit |
| Disputed | Two or more raters with a spread of 2 units or greater. The consensus defaults to the more centrist label and the outlet is marked with a ± indicator |
| Low | A single rater, or a legacy backfilled label awaiting multi-rater review |
| Unrated | Not yet assessed against the rater panel |
When raters disagree by more than one unit, the consensus pulls toward the more centrist label. The default is conservative in the editorial sense: Slantwise would rather under-state a tilt than mis-state one.
The five-point scale
Every rated outlet sits somewhere on this scale. The colors carry across the product (feed pills, spectrum bars, cluster tilt chips), so the scale stays visually consistent wherever orientation is reported.
Outlets whose news selection and framing consistently reflect a left-progressive editorial perspective.
Outlets whose coverage tilts left of center, often through story selection rather than overt commentary.
Outlets rated broadly centrist by multiple raters. Wire services and traditional-of-record newspapers commonly sit here.
Outlets whose coverage tilts right of center in topic emphasis or framing, while not generally identified as conservative-movement press.
Outlets whose news selection and framing consistently reflect a right-conservative editorial perspective.
Outlets that don't fit a political axis
Not every source maps cleanly onto a left–right spectrum. Wire services, fact checkers, foreign outlets, and aggregators carry an axis tag that flags their editorial function in addition to (or in place of) a political rating.
| US Outlet | A domestic American news organization placed on the five-point spectrum. |
| Foreign Outlet | An international news organization. Mapped to the spectrum where US political analogues are clear; tagged for context where not. |
| Wire Service | An agency producing reporting consumed by other outlets (AP, Reuters). Generally rated Center. |
| Fact Check | A dedicated fact-checking organization. Rated on the spectrum where raters provide a position, but the axis tag flags the editorial function. |
| Aggregator | An outlet whose primary output is republishing or surfacing content from elsewhere. Orientation reflects selection patterns rather than original reporting. |
Disputes
Any reader may dispute a rating from an outlet's source page. Disputes enter a public audit trail and are reviewed against current rater evidence. A dispute can result in (a) no change, (b) a re-fetch of rater scores, or (c) an updated label, in which case the change is recorded in the outlet's orientation history.
The strongest disputes cite specific coverage, raters, or evidence, but every submission is read.
Limitations
- A five-point political spectrum is a simplification. Real editorial positions are multi-dimensional; Slantwise reports one axis well rather than several poorly.
- A source rating is not an article rating. Some left-rated outlets publish centrist coverage; some centrist outlets publish polemics.
- Raters disagree. Slantwise shows disagreement rather than collapsing it into false certainty.
- Outlets drift. Ownership changes, editor changes, and beat changes affect orientation. Ratings are periodically re-reviewed.
- No rating system is fully objective. Every rating here shows the raters and dates behind it, so readers can check the evidence themselves.
Beyond orientation
Slantwise aggregates content from RSS and Atom feeds across hundreds of sources. Only headlines, summaries, thumbnails, and metadata are stored. Clicking any article takes the reader directly to the publisher.
Personalization is optional and off by default. Readers who turn it on get their chosen topics, followed sources, and relevance signals from their reading factored into feed order; readers who don't see the same neutral ranking as everyone else. Slantwise does not optimize for engagement: outrage content and clickbait are not promoted because they drive clicks.
Any legitimate news organization may request inclusion by writing to support@slantwise.news. Sources across the full spectrum are included, among them outlets whose editorial positions Slantwise's operators find objectionable, because completeness is part of the product. Sources may be removed for consistently publishing fabricated reporting or for operation by state intelligence services.