How we rate sources

Every source this desk cites renders with a small credibility chip: the outlet's bias lane and factual-reporting grade. This page is the honest fine print behind those chips: whose ratings they are, how coarse they are on purpose, and the full table.

Whose ratings these are (not ours)

Outlet ratings per the public AllSides and Media Bias/Fact Check charts, seeded 2026-07-19. Ratings belong to those organizations, not to this desk.

The ratings on this site belong to those public charts, not to this desk. We transcribe them at a deliberately coarse granularity, attribute them every place they appear, and re-check them against the published charts on a schedule, because chart ratings move. We claim no media-bias methodology of our own, and a chip is never this desk's opinion of an outlet. The charts we transcribe from and cross-reference:

• The AllSides Media Bias Chart
• Media Bias/Fact Check
• The Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart

The table was seeded on 2026-07-19 and is re-verified against the current published charts on a quarterly cadence; the next review is due 2026-10-19.

Why the lanes are coarse

Bias rating is judgment, not measurement, and false precision is its own kind of spin. So the desk keeps whole lanes (left, lean-left, center, lean-right, right, libertarian) instead of scores, and three factual grades (high, mostly-high, mixed) instead of percentages. The chip is meant to answer one reader question fast: roughly where does this outlet sit, and how reliable is its reporting? For anything finer, follow the chart links above.

"Official record" is not a bias lane; it marks a primary source: the institution's own rulings, releases, or legislative record rather than journalism about them. A domain we have not seeded renders as unrated, which means exactly that and nothing more.

How the desk uses the lanes

The intake is deliberately spread across the spectrum so the desk never sees one side's telling alone, and a story whose corroboration spans three or more lanes carries a "corroborated across the spectrum" marker on its card. Reading an outlet is not an endorsement of it, and a rating is not a verdict on any single story: every story is still verified against its cited sources individually, per how we work.

The table

Official record

• Congress.gov (official record) (congress.gov) official recordPrimary source: the legislative record, not journalism.
• Federal Reserve (official record) (federalreserve.gov) official recordPrimary source: the institution's own record, not journalism.
• Department of Justice (official record) (justice.gov) official recordPrimary source: the department's own record, not journalism.
• Supreme Court (official record) (supremecourt.gov) official recordPrimary source: the court's own record, not journalism.

Lean left

• abcnews.go.com (abcnews.go.com) lean-left / highABC News: coarse transcription of the public AllSides/MBFC charts, added 2026-07-27 with the feed.
• cbsnews.com (cbsnews.com) lean-left / highCBS News: coarse transcription of the public AllSides/MBFC charts, added 2026-07-27 with the feed.
• nbcnews.com (nbcnews.com) lean-left / highNBC News: coarse transcription of the public AllSides/MBFC charts, added 2026-07-27 with the feed.
• NPR (npr.org) lean-left / high
• The New York Times (nytimes.com) lean-left / high
• The Guardian (theguardian.com) lean-left / mostly-high
• The Washington Post (washingtonpost.com) lean-left / high

Center

• BBC (bbc.co.uk) center / high
• BBC (bbc.com) center / high
• The Wall Street Journal (dowjones.io) center / highWSJ feed infrastructure domain; same rating as wsj.com.
• PBS NewsHour (pbs.org) center / high
• The Hill (thehill.com) center / high
• The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com) center / highNews side; the opinion side leans right and the desk treats opinion pieces as opinion, not sourcing.

Lean right

• Washington Examiner (washingtonexaminer.com) lean-right / mixed

Right

• Fox News (foxnews.com) right / mixed
• National Review (nationalreview.com) right / mostly-highOpinion-forward publication; the desk uses its reporting, labels its commentary.

Libertarian

• Reason (reason.com) libertarian / mostly-high

GoCheckMyNews reports events. It does not editorialize and it does not advise. Nothing here is political advocacy, legal advice, or financial advice.