News •
September 6th, 2018
Media Bias Update: Drudge Report
AllSides Media Bias Ratings are fluid and subject to change as media outlets change over time, or we acquire new information.
AllSides previously rated The Drudge Report, an American news aggregation website, as having a Right media bias, but in August 2018, we conducted an editorial review and changed the Drudge Report to a Lean Right media bias.
An editorial review is a key media bias rating methodology for AllSides. It means the AllSides editorial staff has reviewed the works of this source and come to a consensus on its media bias. Our editorial reviews are always conducted by a variety of individuals who have biases ranging from left to right. Learn more about AllSides media bias rating methods.
Changing The Drudge Report's AllSides Media Bias Rating
While The Drudge Report is often considered to be Far Right or very conservative, during the editorial review for The Drudge Report, the AllSides team noticed that the Drudge Report regularly features news stories that are being mostly covered by Left outlets. The Drudge Report often aggregates stories from outlets with a Left media bias, including The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, NBC, and more. While the Drudge Report does feature news stories and articles from Left sources, it also features lots of stories from sources with a Center, Right, Lean Right media bias, including Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and Breitbart.
Notably, upon first looking at the Drudge Report, at least one member of the AllSides team initially thought that the Drudge Report might warrant a Lean Left or Center bias. This initial instinct is consistent with a 2005 UCLA study which found the Drudge Report has a Lean Left media bias.
"One thing people should keep in mind is that our data for the Drudge Report was based almost entirely on the articles that the Drudge Report lists on other Websites," said study author Tim Groseclose, the study's lead author, formerly faculty at UCLA and currently Adam Smith Chair at George Mason University's Mercatus Center. "Very little was based on the stories that [conservative political commentator] Matt Drudge himself wrote. The fact that the Drudge Report appears left of center is merely a reflection of the overall bias of the media."
Criticism About The Drudge Report's Media Bias
The Drudge Report has been criticized heavily in the past for running stories that were hoaxes, poorly sourced, or unfactual, including a conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not a U.S. citizen, a hoax about a former prostitute who claimed her son was fathered by Bill Clinton, and a false statement that an undocumented immigrant started the October 2017 Northern California wildfires.
The AllSides editorial team noted that the Drudge Report often uses sensational stories or language in its headlines and the stories it chooses to feature. The AllSides staff expressed serious concerns about the Drudge Report publishing sensationalist or fake news.
According to a 2014 Pew Research Study, the clear majority of the Drudge Report's audience (74%) is right-of-center (by comparison, 26% of all Pew panelists were right-of-center).
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