AllSides displays the news as it is covered from a breadth of perspectives. That includes different perspectives on the same story, as well as different opinions on the day's top stories. We also seek to give context by revealing debate on the underlying issues and providing other helpful background. If you like what we do and want to help AllSides to sustain ourselves and grow, please consider becoming a sustaining member.
We refrain from choosing the top stories ourselves — for the most part, we reflect the top news other media outlets are covering.
We adhere to a special set of standards for our news curation and original content: Here are several helpful explainers about those standards:
- News Curation Principles
- How AllSides Creates Balanced News
- How AllSides Separates News and Opinion
- How AllSides Handles Media Bias in Fact Checking
- How the AllSides News Team Uses AI
While we strive to remain balanced, we do add some editorial bias of our own. We believe everyone is biased, including us, and it is important to be transparent about bias. Your participation helps us to achieve balance.
The AllSides balanced newsfeed seeks to adhere to the following principles:
We give voice to perspectives often ignored. We don’t just show Left, Center and Right perspectives, but also perspectives representing everything from Socialist to Libertarian, Blue-dog Democrat to Mainstream Republican, Progressive to Social Conservative, and everything in between. That means stories that might be missing entirely from leading news sites but are top headlines for a specific group will often appear on AllSides. Still, we're not perfect. We do our best, but there may be perspectives we miss. If you think of one, email us feedback.
We give extra attention to news with contrasting coverage. It's not uncommon to see mainstream media coverage that differs so widely that it is hard to believe they are reporting on the same event — whether it be elections, terrorist acts, cultural issues, economics, or any other issue. We give stories with contrasting coverage extra emphasis to be sure you get the full picture and can understand what is really happening.
We also shine extra light on news with mutual support or common themes across divides. Disagreement is part of a well-functioning system. But media tends to overemphasize division and ignore very important news of collaboration and common purpose. It tends to overemphasize clashes among smaller numbers of our population and ignore mutual understanding, empathy and goodwill that are shared and demonstrated often by larger numbers. We strive to bring better balance and a more accurate picture of the world by showing the good as well.
We highlight stories on polarization and media bias. AllSides aims to reduce dysfunctional polarization, so we can work together and solve problems. Revealing media bias and exposing people to different points of view helps to achieve that. Raising awareness and understanding of polarization and bias supports this cause.
We highlight free speech and civil discourse. We cannot bridge divides and solve problems without listening to each other and sharing our thoughts. This requires a free flow of information and free speech, so that ideas (both good and bad) are heard. It also requires civil discourse, so we can relate and empathize with each other.
We focus on political news — at least for now. There are many other topics, like health, finance, parenting, and consumer products — to name just a few — that would benefit from the exposure of different perspectives and bias. We see the most urgent need and biggest opportunity for change in the political world, so we have started there.
We choose our words carefully. This means saying "unauthorized immigrants" instead of "illegal" or "undocumented," and leaving the words "black" and "white" lowercase when used in a racial context. Read more about these decisions and how they differ from what many other media outlets do.
We're transparent about our editorial decisions. When we make a decision around editorial standards, we are transparent about it and usually write a blog post on it.
AllSides empowers people to be informed, understand and decide for themselves. Without exposure to different points of view, we can be manipulated into believing and acting in certain ways. When we are well informed, we are better equipped to solve problems and build “a more perfect union." See how AllSides uses clear and specific labels for all content, so users know exactly what kind of reading material they're about to click on.
Overall, AllSides News, Issues and Perspectives supports the broader AllSides mission to strengthen our democracy by freeing people from filter bubbles so they can better understand the world — and each other. Our editorial philosophy helps us to put this mission into daily practice.
We have special guidelines for comments and replies on our social media accounts. Read our guidelines here.
We are using AI tools to tighten our process. Our editors are occasionally using AllSides-developed, artificial intelligence (AI) news tools that enable us to automatically curate and create a first draft summary of top news articles for some stories, which editors then review, edit, and publish. Read more here.
Signed by CEO and co-founder John Gable and the AllSides news team. View our balanced news and media bias ratings.