From the Right

As AllSides has documented, traditional journalistic standards of objectivity, fairness, and balance have largely gone by the wayside in the American press. Americans who want to be adequately informed now have to source their news from multiple outlets and angles in order to get the full story and not be manipulated by slant and bias. 

Take The New York Times’ (Lean Left bias) coverage of presidential pardons in 2020, as Trump left office for the first time, and on Monday, as Biden left. 

Back in 2020, The Times showed very clear spin by framing pardons from Donald Trump as “aggressive” and evidence of him “apply[ing] his own standard of justice for his allies,” while Biden’s pardons were described soberly — merely a way to “head off politically driven persecutions.”

The much more tempered language for Biden suggests where The New York Times’ presidential preference likely lies — ultimately eroding readers’ trust that the paper will uphold the traditional journalistic standard of treating all political actors neutrally. (Monday’s article has since been updated and now reads slightly differently, but it read this way in the early morning hours, as seen in archival tools). 

There are precious few media outlets that seem willing to seriously address the issue of media bias, despite tanking public trust in news and abysmal readership and viewership rates.

Last year, for instance, NPR (Lean Left) suspended senior editor Uri Berliner for five days after he penned an essay in The Free Press (Lean Right) alleging NPR had a left-wing bias and had ignored concerns about its lack of objectivity and balance for years. He later resigned. The paper announced an additional editorial review before publication. It was unclear who would conduct the reviews or how editors would specifically address bias, and the publication did not address the fact that Berliner claimed to have found 87 Democrats and zero Republicans in editorial positions at the publication.

Or take The Washington Post, also rated Lean Left by AllSides. Last Wednesday, 400 employees sent a letter to owner Jeff Bezos requesting a meeting to discuss leadership decisions that they said “led readers to question the integrity of this institution." They were likely referring to Bezos’ decision to pull the plug on Washington Post’s planned editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris back in October, which led to numerous resignations among editors and staff. 

The fact that Washington Post reporters appear to remain upset that higher-ups made a decision to move the outlet in a more neutral direction says a lot about the bias of the newsroom as-is.

There are precious few media outlets that seem willing to seriously address the issue of media bias, despite tanking public trust in news and abysmal readership and viewership rates.

Meanwhile, the Post has reportedly been experiencing problems keeping readers: its website had 101 million unique visitors a month in 2020, according to AP (Left), which had dropped to 50 million at the end of 2023. In fact, the Post lost a reported $77 million in 2023. 

Americans have long rated The Washington Post as a left-leaning publication — including as recently as in a Dec. 2024 blind survey by AllSides. Bezos’ decision, while creating internal fallout, could have been a move toward changing its perception as a partisan outlet and courting new readers. 

CNN, also rated Lean Left by Americans, is reportedly also experiencing a decline: In 2024, CNN had its worst-ever performance among viewers. It saw a 45% drop in prime-time viewership, and is down to only 394,000 total viewers. Its revenue has dropped by $400 million in three years.

One partisan outlet that's doing well, however, is Fox News (Right bias), which dominated ratings in 2024. Fox was founded in 1996, during a time when infotainment was already in full swing. Legacy outlets, on the other hand, are perhaps expected to be stewards upholding the traditional principles of their respective eras —The New York Times was founded in 1851,The Washington Post in 1877, and NPR in 1971. It's almost as if no one expects Fox to lose its partisan bent, but more rigor and evenhandedness is expected from legacy outlets due to their history. 

And even if Fox is well-watched, is it actually trusted? An abysmal number of Americans rate TV and newspaper reporters as having “high” or “very high” honesty and ethical standards, according to data from Gallup. In a poll analyzing honesty/ethics in 23 professions, including lawyers, nursing home operators, bankers, and more, just 3% of Americans rate TV reporters as having high ethics and honesty, and just 4% say newspaper reporters do.

A full 20% of Amerians say ethics/honesty among newspaper reporters is “very low.” Twenty-seven percent say TV reporters have “very low” ethics and honesty.

Trust in news overall remains at record lows — in 2024, Gallup reported that for the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Thirty-three percent of Americans said they had “not very much” confidence in media.

In 1972, 68% of Americans had “a great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in news. In 2024, only 31% did. 

It’s a dismal landscape, but there is a way for newsrooms to regain public trust — and it requires actually listening to the public.

Instead of turning a deaf ear to claims of bias and refusing to address issues when those within their own ranks sound the alarm or audience numbers tank, newsrooms can seek out a temperature check on their performance. By discovering how audiences actually feel about their work, newsrooms can make adjustments as necessary to mitigate bias and slant, showing they are serious about fairness, representing all Americans' views fairly, and regaining the public’s trust.

Journalists must do more to show they are not siloed into an elite echo chamber of like-minded peers, deaf to the concerns and perceptions of everyday Americans. They can regain trust by incorporating independent audits to improve both the perception of their profession and the actual output. 

Journalism is a critical profession, but its job is not to pick winners and losers, nor to manipulate the information readers receive to suit its desired political agenda. To the degree that journalists can reclaim the traditional standards they once sought to uphold, there may be hope for this profession to elevate its status as public servants once again. 

Julie Mastrine is the Director of Marketing and Media Bias Ratings at AllSides. She has a Lean Right bias.

Reviewed and edited by:

Henry A. Brechter, editor-in-chief (Center bias)

Emily Allen, News Editor and Bias Analyst (Left bias)

Evan Wagner, News Editor and Product Manager (Lean Left bias)