First, regarding local news:
Today’s blog is about quality national news, but before delving into that, a brief mention about local news. As the Seattle Times article referenced below mentions, “most states lost half their working journalists.” The loss of so many reporters threatens communities with not having accurate and comprehensive news about what’s going on in their communities, and it also compromises the ability to hold local officials, agencies, businesses, and other groups accountable. Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington State recognizes the risk to communities and democracy, so she’s striving to strengthen local journalism. You can read more in this article: Brier Dudley, “Sen. Cantwell on local news and keeping Americans informed,” Seattle Times, 30 July 2021, Web, Senator Maria Cantwell strives to strengthen local news
Now, regarding quality national news:
I posted “Where to go for quality national news,” to this blog on 16 Apr. 2021 (see https://michaelmaddoxconservation.com/2021/04/16/where-to-go-for-quality-national-news/) , referring to reliability ratings of the national news media that were made by Ad Fontes Media (which describes itself as a “public benefit corporation with a mission to make news consumers smarter and news media better”). Its Media Bias Chart can be accessed at https://www.adfontesmedia.com/.
The Factual also ranks news sources, and it’s ratings of which are the most objective can be found at https://blog.thefactual.com/most-objective-news-sources. To determine these ratings, The Factual reviewed 828,00 articles from 53 sources, covering the period from 1 Jan. 2020 to 18 May 2021. For those wanting to know how the analyses were done, The Factual’s browser extension and the microsite IsThisCredible.com lets you drill down into the details.
[Note: This list does not include “local” papers (such as the The Seattle Times) which report lots of national news, though it does list The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post.]
Per The Factual, these are the Top Ten most objective national news sources:
Percentage Score
Factcheck 86.2
Smithsonian Magazine 82.7
Undark 80.9
The Conversation 76.4
Grist 76.0
The Intercept 75.3
FiveThirtyEight 74.0
Lawfare Blog 73.3
Politifact 73.2
National Geographic 72.9
These are the objectivity ratings of those news sources after the Top Ten.
Percentage Score
Vox 72.4
ABC News 72.0
CNBC 71.5
ProPublica 71.4
New Republic 71.0
Business Insider 70.7
Science Magazine 70.4
Washington Examiner 69.6
Reason 69.0
New York Times 68.4
MarketWatch 67.6
The Norton 67.4
NPR 67.2
Wired Magazine 67.2
CBS News 67.2
Mother Jones 66.9
LA Times 66.9
The Atlantic 66.7
Washington Post 66.1
Tech Crunch 66.0
BBC 65.7
Daily Beast 65.6
Politico 65.5
Quillette 65.1
The Guardian 65.1
Cato Institute 64.3
New Yorker 63.0
Reuters 62.9
USA Today 62.6
Real Clear Politics 62.3
Wall Street Journal 61.8
Financial Times 60.3
Voice of America 58.8
The American Conservative 57.8
Popular Science 56.7
Fox News 55.3
The Federalist 55.3
Al Jazeera 54.3
CNN 53.6
Breitbart 52.8
National Review 50.3
Washington Times 50.3
Forbes 49.3
Michael Maddox Conservation 