How do news outlets across the political spectrum influence perspectives on the Trump administration through media coverage?
For the AllSides’ Shaping the Narrative 6-part series, we examine how often national news media outlets cover select topics, including the economy, the Trump administration, politics, international news, immigration, and crime.
For the purposes of this project, wire news content and opinion pieces were included in the overall headline analysis of each hosting news outlet. AllSides assumes that such content passed each outlet’s standard of review and is thus attributed to the hosting news outlet.
AllSides collected and analyzed headlines from 16 outlets across the political spectrum over the course of 14 days (April 9 – April 22, 2025). In doing so, AllSides reveals how the media shapes the narrative on key topics.
Note: Outlets may have changed their headlines since the data collection period. Our analysis is based on the headlines as they appeared when collected.
In part two of this series, we’re breaking down coverage of the Trump administration. Some key findings were:
- Outlets on the Left covered the Trump administration more than outlets on the Right: 32% of articles from outlets AllSides rates as Left or Lean Left were on the Trump administration, in comparison to 21% from Right or Lean Right-rated outlets.
- Center outlets covered the Trump administration the least – 15% of total coverage.
- Outlets on the Left generally covered the Trump administration in relation to a weakened economy.
- Outlets on the Right generally reported on Trump’s response to critiques or claims, as opposed to the claims themselves.
- Lean Right outlets were more critical of the Trump administration than Right outlets – and on Trump’s tariff and foreign policy specifically, almost as critical as Center outlets.
Read more from AllSides’ Shaping the Narrative series:
- Shaping the Narrative: Economy
- Shaping the Narrative: Politics
- Shaping the Narrative: Immigration
- Shaping the Narrative: International News
Which News Sources Cover Trump the Most or Least?
On average, the Trump administration was covered the most by outlets AllSides rates as Left – representing about 36% of all articles written by Left outlets during this research period. Of the Left outlets, MSNBC (Left bias) covered the Trump administration the most; 52% of its articles were about the Trump administration during the study period. This was followed by HuffPost (Left bias) at 43% and the Associated Press News (Left bias) at 34%.
The outlets that covered the Trump administration the least during the research period were BBC News (Center bias) at 13%, Reuters (Center bias) at 13%, and the New York Post (Lean Right bias) at 9%.
For the purposes of this study, what determined whether a media outlet covered the Trump administration was if it wrote about: Trump, the Trump Administration, and MAGA. (Full Breakdown per Topic - Report) Moreover, what led to an article being labeled as covering the Trump Administration was determined by the AllSides’ Topic Mapping Methodology (p. 44).
How Are Left & Lean Left Outlets Covering the Trump Administration?
Generally speaking, Left and Lean Left outlets were often critical of the Trump administration, seldom offering a more positive story or perspective on the Trump administration. Left and Lean Left outlets typically displayed more negativity bias when covering the Trump administration, often reframing stories to focus on the negative outcomes or perspectives.
MSNBC (Left bias) published the sensationalist headline, “In alarming escalation, Trump orders probes into two ex-officials who defied him” – by using the words: ‘alarming,’ ‘escalation,’ and ‘defied.’
Associated Press (Left bias) published a slanted headline: “Trump proclaims himself ‘in good shape,’ but the results of his physical aren’t immediately released,” The headline pivots away from Trump’s alleged good health to the question of why his test results aren’t immediately released to support his claim.
ABC News (Lean Left bias) wrote the headline, “Administration likely acted in contempt by not returning deportation flights: Judge.” In the headline, ABC details the potential for the Trump administration to be found in contempt of the court as ‘likely’ – including its own judgement on the likelihood of the contempt ruling coming through, an example of slant. The outlet also showed bias by viewpoint placement, elevating the perspective of Judge Boasberg in the headline, along with several direct quotes from the Judge in the article, with only 1 quote from the Trump administration in response – displaying bias by viewpoint placement in the article.
The Washington Post (Lean Left bias) wrote, “Does the president have a strategy or is he winging it?” displaying flawed logic by insinuating that Trump does not have a plan due to the alleged “chaos and confusion”caused by the Trump administration. The use of “radical” in the headline and “chaos and confusion” in its subhead is also an example of spin, sensationalism, subjective qualifying adjectives, and word choice bias.
How Are Center Outlets Covering the Trump Administration?
Center outlets generally followed suit with critiques of the Trump administration. However, BBC News (Center Bias) showed far fewer instances of notable bias when compared to other Center rated outlets.
BBC News (Center bias) ran a neutral headline, “Judge says Trump officials could be found in contempt. What happens next?” Moreover, in the article text, BBC provided the judge’s argument followed by the Trump administration’s defense, showing balance.
The Wall Street Journal (Center bias) wrote the headline, “Trump Administration Retreats From White Collar Criminal Enforcement” engaging in slant with the word ‘Retreats,’ while also noting in the article itself how the Trump administration is ‘effectively redefining what business conduct constitutes a crime.’ With this, WSJ spins the story to make it seem as though Trump’s ‘retreat’ from white collar crime enforcement is a sponsorship of white collar crime.
Reuters (Center bias) also spun a headline against the Trump administration, saying it “embrace[d] Russian demands”, writing, “Trump envoy's embrace of Russian demands worries Republicans, U.S. allies.” Additionally, the outlet engaged in sensationalism within the article by stating how the aforementioned events “set off alarms” at the White House.
How Are Right and Lean Right Outlets Covering the Trump Administration?
Right and Lean Right outlets offered more diverse perspectives, with Lean Right outlets generally offering more critical framings of the Trump administration than Right outlets. Right outlets commonly displayed bias by viewpoint placement.
When Newsmax (Right bias) covered the Trump Administration the outlet often quoted Trump directly. Headlines included, “Trump: 'I Know What I'm Doing' on Tariffs” and the AP wire piece, “Trump: CBS, '60 Minutes' Attacks 'Unlawful, Illegal'.” Of the 43 headlines Newsmax published on the Trump administration in any capacity, the outlet quoted Trump in 12 of them – what is known as bias by viewpoint placement.
Breitbart (Right bias) wrote, “House Dem: ‘I've said SCOTUS is 'Illegitimate', but Trump has to follow it’” quoting a Democratic politician’s criticisms of Trump. However, the outlet did not provide the context for the quote in the headline, foregoing the lawmaker’s acknowledgement of their inconsistent messaging and critiques of the Supreme Court and Trump, bias by omission. Moreover, the outlet only quoted the lawmaker’s full statement near the bottom of the article, which is bias by viewpoint placement.
A Washington Examiner (Lean Right bias) opinion writer criticized the Trump administration, writing, “Federal courts should block Trump’s illegal tariff regime.” The outlet engaged in word choice bias by writing about Trump's “regime,” a term generally associated with authoritarian governments. Moreover, the article is an example of story choice bias, as the Washington Examiner placed this headline near the top of the webpage during the data collection period.
The New York Post (Lean Right bias) promoted the opinion piece, “Trump needs to close some deals to take the win on tariffs – or he’s handing them to Xi” from the New York Post Opinion (Right bias) emphasizing in the article, the importance of Trump’s tariff strategy to take advantage of the ‘disruption’ caused by Trump’s tariffs as opposed to ‘alienating our traditional trading friends.’
Note: While the New York Post’s opinion section is rated Right by AllSides, for this project analysis, all headlines were attributed to outlets’ homepages they were collected from.
Was Coverage Influenced by Political Bias?
In our previous Shaping the Narrative blog, How Major Media Outlets Cover the Economy, we found a clear correlation between outlets’ biases and how they covered the economy. However, with coverage of the Trump administration, the correlation was not as strong.
Left and Lean Left outlets remained hypercritical of the Trump administration and dedicated a significant portion – 32% overall – of their media coverage to this topic. This is in comparison to Right and Lean Right outlets, which covered the Trump administration only 21% of the time. However, coverage from Lean Right outlets tended to be more critical of Trump than reporting from Right outlets.
Center outlets displayed several types of bias and took a generally critical stance toward the Trump administration, not dissimilar from Left and Lean Left outlets. BBC News acted as an outlier of sorts, where other than 2 instances where the outlet used spin words such as "threatens" or "tension", among 18 total headlines on the Trump administration, the outlet didn't express much bias against Trump when compared to the rest of the news outlets in this project.
See how major media outlets covered Politics in the third part of our analysis.
Emanuel Macuixtle is a Policy Analyst and Research Assistant at AllSides. He has a Left bias.
This blog was edited and reviewed by Andrew Weinzrierl, Bias Research Manager & Data Journalist (Lean Left), Andy Gorel, News and Social Media Editor (Center), Henry A. Brechter, Editor-in-Chief (Center), Johnathon Held, News and Bias Analyst (Lean Right), and Julie Mastrine, Director of Marketing and Bias Ratings (Right).
