Ad Fontes Media, Inc. is a

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

-based, media

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, primarily known for its

Media Bias Media bias occurs when journalists and news producers show bias in how they report and cover news. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening of the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an ...

Chart, which rates media sources in terms of

political bias Political bias refers to the bias or manipulation of information to favor a particular political position, party, or candidate. Closely associated with a media bias, it often describes how journalists, television programs, or news organizat ...

and reliability. The organization was founded in 2018 by patent attorney Vanessa Otero with the goal of combating

political polarization Political polarization (spelled ''polarisation'' in British English, Australian English, and New Zealand English) is the divergence of political attitudes away from the center, towards ideological extremes. Scholars distinguish between ideologi ...

and

media bias Media bias occurs when journalists and news producers show bias in how they report and cover news. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening of the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an ...

. Ad Fontes Media uses a panel of analysts across the

political spectrum A political spectrum is a system to characterize and classify different Politics, political positions in relation to one another. These positions sit upon one or more Geometry, geometric Coordinate axis, axes that represent independent political ...

to evaluate articles for the Chart.

History

Ad Fontes Media has its origins in a blog called ''All Generalizations are False'' which was written by patent attorney Vanessa Otero from

Denver Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...

, Colorado. Otero first published the Media Bias Chart, a graphic which helped viewers visualize

media bias in the United States The history of media bias in the United States has evolved from overtly partisan newspapers in the 18th and 19th centuries to professional journalism with ethical standards in the 20th century. Early newspapers often reflected the views of thei ...

, on the blog. The Media Bias Chart became a

viral phenomenon Viral phenomena or viral sensations are objects or patterns that are able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them. Analogous to the way in which viruses propagate, the te ...

on the

Imgur Imgur ( , stylized as imgur) is an American online image sharing and image hosting service with a focus on social gossip that was founded by Alan Schaaf in 2009. The service has hosted viral images and memes, particularly those posted on ...

image sharing service in December 2016, and Otero founded Ad Fontes Media to serve as the publisher of the chart. One of Otero's reasons for creating the organization was that "many sources people consider to be 'news sources' are actually dominated by analysis and opinion pieces," and that "extreme sources play on people's worst instincts, like fear and tribalism, and take advantage of people's

confirmation bias Confirmation bias (also confirmatory bias, myside bias, or congeniality bias) is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or Value (ethics and social sciences), val ...

es." In an interview with

Newsy Scripps News is a free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) streaming news channel, and a former American digital subchannel network headquartered in Atlanta, GA, and owned by the Scripps Networks division of the E. W. Scripps Company. It ...

, she stated that "If people understood that the sources they are consuming are actively making them angrier and polarizing them, then they might choose to consume less of that." In 2018, Ad Fontes successfully launched a crowdfunding campaign to improve the technology behind the chart, increase the number of analysts, and make the site's methodology more transparent. Otero chose the name "Ad Fontes" because it is Latin for "to the source"; her method is to go to a media source itself and rate its bias and reliability "by analyzing the source and its actual content."

Media Bias Chart

The Media Bias Chart by Ad Fontes Media rates various media sources on two different scales:

(

left Left may refer to: Music * ''Left'' (Hope of the States album), 2006 * ''Left'' (Monkey House album), 2016 * ''Left'' (Helmet album), 2023 * "Left", a song by Nickelback from the album ''Curb'', 1996 Direction * Left (direction), the relativ ...

right Rights are law, legal, social, or ethics, ethical principles of freedom or Entitlement (fair division), entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal sy ...

) on the horizontal axis and reliability on the vertical axis. On the chart, sources are concentrated in an "inverted-U" shape as media sources with a neutral bias are generally reliable in their original fact reporting, while sources with an extreme bias on either side often contain factually inaccurate information and propaganda. Ad Fontes is non-partisan. During the September 2020 media bias project, nearly 1800 individual articles and TV news shows were rated by at least three analysts with different political views (left, right and center). There were 120 analysts, each reviewed about 370 articles and about 17 TV shows. Each analyst rated approximately three articles from each of the over 100 news sources available for viewing on the Chart. As a result, there were nearly 7,000 individual ratings. Otero sees the Media Bias Chart as an "anchor" that counteracts

in news media, and aspires for Ad Fontes to become a "''

Consumer Reports Consumer Reports (CR), formerly Consumers Union (CU), is an American nonprofit consumer organization dedicated to independent product testing, investigative journalism, consumer-oriented research, public education, and consumer advocacy. Founded ...

'' for media ratings". She compared low-quality news sources to

junk food "Junk food" is a term used to describe food that is high in calorie#Nutrition, calories from macronutrients such as sugar and fat, and often also high in sodium, making it hyperpalatable, and low in dietary fiber, Protein (nutrient), protein, or m ...

, and described sources with extreme bias as "very toxic and damaging to the country".

Methodology

As of 2021: According to Natasha Strydhorst of the College of Media & Communication,

Texas Tech University Texas Tech University (Texas Tech, Tech, or TTU) is a public university, public research university in Lubbock, Texas, United States. Established on February 10, 1923, and called Texas Technological College until 1969, it is the flagship instit ...

, the ratings system provides "a viable operationalization of audiences' media selections". However, "It does not (and cannot) measure objective media bias and reliability, but it also shares this limitation with other available measures of the phenomena."

Reception

The chart has been criticized by people on the left and the right. According to Otero, "A lot of people on the left will call us

neoliberal Neoliberalism is a political and economic ideology that advocates for free-market capitalism, which became dominant in policy-making from the late 20th century onward. The term has multiple, competing definitions, and is most often used pej ...

shills, and then a bunch of people that are on the right are like, 'Oh, you guys are a bunch of leftists yourselves. In 2018, a ''

Columbia Journalism Review The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its original purpose was "to assess the performance ...

'' article questioned the thoroughness of the Media Bias Chart (when it was based solely on Otero's opinions) and similar initiatives, stating that "the five to 20 stories typically judged on these sites represent but a drop of mainstream news outlets' production". In 2021, an article on the

Association of College and Research Libraries The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes library, libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world. History 19th ...

' blog argued that the Media Bias Chart is detrimental to media literacy efforts because it "promotes a false equivalency between left and right, lionizes a political 'center' as being without bias, and reinforces harmful perceptions about what constitutes 'news' in our media ecosystem, and is ignored by anyone that doesn't already hold a comparable view of the media landscape." News sources that were rated as "heavily biased" on the Media Bias Chart have been critical of the chart.

Alex Jones Alexander Emerick Jones (born February 11, 1974) is an American Far-right politics, far-right radio host, radio show host and prominent conspiracy theorist. He hosts ''The Alex Jones Show'' from Austin, Texas. ''The Alex Jones Show'' is the lo ...

, the founder of right-wing

conspiracy theory A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * ...

site '' InfoWars'', said in 2018 that Ad Fontes' chart represented the "dying dinosaur media's extreme liberal bias" after the chart classified ''InfoWars'' as "nonsense damaging to public discourse". ''InfoWars'' responded with a chart of their own, putting themselves as "independent" and representing "freedom" while labeling news sources like the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...

as "tyranny" and "state-run corporate/foreign influences"; ''InfoWars''s chart was widely criticized by journalists on Twitter.

FTC investigation

In June of 2025, the

U.S. Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. It shares jurisdiction over fe ...

(FTC) issued

civil investigative demand A civil investigative demand (CID) is a discovery tool used by a number of executive agencies in the United States to obtain information relevant to an investigation. By contrast with other discovery mechanisms, CIDs are typically issued before a ...

(CID) letters to several media rating firms, including Ad Fontes Media, requiring them to disclose details about their operations, finances, methodologies, and industry relationships. The investigation is part of broader government scrutiny into media rating firms and their role in evaluating news sources for misinformation, hate speech, and deceptive content. Ad Fontes Media CEO Vanessa Otero described the demands as "excessive" and "overzealous", noting that such requests are typically reserved for entities facing litigation. Despite concerns about the burden of compliance, Ad Fontes Media has stated that it will cooperate with the FTC's inquiry.

References

External links

* {{Official website 2018 establishments in Colorado Organizations established in 2018 Criticism of journalism Fact-checking websites Media bias controversies American journalism organizations Organizations based in Colorado Media analysis organizations and websites