What to Make of the White House's New Media Bias Portal

On Dec. 1, the White House launched its Media Bias Portal, a public database it said “catalogs the avalanche of lies, deliberate distortions, and manufactured hoaxes churned out by activist “journalists” and their failing outlets.” The administration also put out a call to the public for bias tips, saying, “The days of the Fake News Media controlling the narrative with lies, fake anonymous sources, and willful bias are over. If the legacy media won’t honor their responsibility to accurately inform the public, we know the American people will.”

While Americans on the right may look at this portal and agree with its conclusions, left-wing and center Americans are likely to see this portal as an unfair use of taxpayer dollars. 

Let’s explore why a right-wing administration is so focused on media bias, what left, center, and right Americans may think of the portal, and assess the actual quality of bias analysis coming out of the White House.

RELATED: How Journalists Can Regain Public Trust

What the White House Media Bias Portal Shows

There are 21 total outlets listed in the portal. All except four (The Hill, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, KTLA) are rated Left or Lean Left by AllSides.

Categories on the White House bias portal include “Bias,” “Circular Reporting,” “Failure to Report,” “False Claim,” “Left-wing Lunacy,” “Lie,” “Malpractice,” “Mischaracterization,” “Misrepresentation” and “Omission of Text.” It includes a Leaderboard subtitled as a “race to the bottom,” with Washington Post, rated Lean Left by AllSides, currently in the “lead.” An “Offender Hall of Shame” section highlights The Washington Post, CBS News (Lean Left), CNN (Lean Left), and MSNBC (now rebranded to MS NOW — Left bias).

RELATED: Announcing AllSides Media Bias Chart Version 11

Conservatives Have Alleged Legacy Media Bias for Years — And Some Data Backs This Up

If you're a political party in power and you feel the media is against you, twisting or lying about what you're doing, it makes sense to want to expose that. For years, Donald Trump and conservatives have argued legacy media shows bias to the left, and not necessarily without merit. 

Since our founding in 2012, AllSides has conducted bias reviews by a multipartisan panel of experts on the left, center, and right, as well as Blind Bias Surveys of Americans across the political spectrum. Over the years, the AllSides Media Bias Chart has revealed that the majority of what can be thought of as legacy media — major media institutions that are well-resourced and have a significant history in the United States, such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, Associated Press, ABC News, and CBS News, all founded in the early 20th century or late 19th century — indeed have had a consistent Lean Left bias; AP, for its part, has actually trended into the Left category in recent years. 

Our ratings mean Americans and expert panels identified that the reporting in these outlets shows patterns of the 16 Types of Bias, generally slanted against the right and in favor of the left. 

RELATED: How Journalists Can Regain Public Trust

The bias claims are also informed by outside data about the profession, such as a 2022 Syracuse University study that found just 3.4% of American journalists identified as Republicans and 36.4% identified as Democrats. Some anecdotal evidence may be relevant as well: former NPR Senior Editor Uri Berliner claimed to have found 87 Democrats and zero Republicans in editorial positions at the publication in 2024, shortly before he resigned over concerns of bias. NPR was subsequently stripped of federal funding earlier this year, with bias being among the core concerns cited by right-wing lawmakers.

How Left, Center and Right Americans May Feel About the White House Bias Portal

Just as Republicans didn’t appreciate their tax money going toward biased media, taxpayers — particularly those who are not aligned with Trump — may not appreciate their tax money going toward imbalanced or politically charged analysis. Just as the Trump admin disavowed NPR for using taxpayer money to fund biased media, this can be seen as a similar issue, albeit funding one-sided bias analysis. Americans who agree with the left-wing media’s portrayal of the Trump administration probably appreciate this portal the least. 

No one expects a political group or administration to be neutral, but taxpayers may take issue with the government presenting itself as any sort of media watchdog organization or authority on journalism at all. 

Quality of Analysis: Are the White House's Bias Claims Legit?

So, how high is the quality of the bias analysis being done by the White House?

Some of the claims the White House points out are instances of bias we ourselves have pointed out, and many of the bias instances it points out are indeed valid. Yet there are some issues — the analysis isn't being done by a balanced team and is fundamentally one-sided by primarily assessing coverage by left–wing media on the Trump administration. 

The White House also does not provide concrete definitions of its bias categories (“Lie,” “Left-wing lunacy,” etc.), so we cannot measure its analysis against its own definitions. In addition, a category like “lunacy” is fundamentally sensationalist. The White House is also not transparent about who is conducting the analysis. It also doesn’t do bias analysis on broad topics — it primarily assesses how the administration is being covered, so the story choice for the bias analysis is fundamentally biased (of course, this is the purpose of the portal — to showcase how the administration is being covered, not to expose media bias more broadly). 

However, many of the examples of bias the White House points to are well-founded. For example, it  highlights a map created by The Washington Post purportedly showing federal troops in DC, which the Post said was based on “accounts from Post reporters on the ground in D.C. and verified videos on social media.” The White House highlighted this poor sourcing and noted multiple other news outlets ran with the map unchecked. AllSides would probably call this type of bias omission of source attribution; the White House calls it Circular Reporting, Left-wing lunacy, Lie, and Malpractice.

In another analysis, the White House takes issue with CBS News for using the term “Colorado grandfather” in the headline, “Colorado grandfather detained by ICE while walking his dog; ICE points to criminal record,” pointing out that the man had been arrested 27 times; this is an example of bias AllSides would call slant — when reporters play up one aspect of the story and downplay another. By emphasizing he’s a grandfather and was walking his dog, a seemingly innocuous act, CBS offers a sympathetic view of the subject. The headline emphasizes harmless behavior at the moment of arrest rather than the underlying legal reason, which is presented as an afterthought and attributed to ICE, rather than offered as objective reality. As such, this is a legitimate claim of biased reporting.

One White House bias analysis points to an opinion piece that ran in The Hill that featured an image of National Guard troops in front of the U.S. Capitol. The White House calls it a “lie” and “misrepresentation” because it claims The Hill’s featured image was from March 2021 when Joe Biden was president. AllSides would call this photo bias or perhaps bias by omission, since The Hill did not note when the photo was taken. However, AllSides could not independently corroborate the claim that the photo is indeed from 2021, as we don’t have access to AP photo archives. If it is old, this is a legitimate claim of media bias by the White House.

Another bias portal post takes issue with the media for “misrepresent[ing] President Trump’s call for Members of Congress to be held accountable for inciting sedition by saying that he called for their “execution.”" Indeed, many media outlets, including AP, The Independent, and USA Today, quoted Trump as saying in a Truth Social post that the Congresspersons were exhibiting “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.” The aforementioned outlets, did not link to this specific post mentioning death, showing what AllSides would call bias by omission of source attribution; AllSides was able to locate the post on Trump’s feed here. This, however, does not appear to be the point of detail the White House takes issue with. The White House doesn't explain in detail how the media misrepresented Trump's "punishable by DEATH" post, but rather claims the media ran with the accusation President Trump had issued illegal orders to service members, without saying exactly how. 

AllSides did not assess every bias claim on The White House portal — if you found one you believe is unfair, please email us. While the bias analysis is one-sided, the categories are not defined, the analysis only focuses on specific coverage mostly from the left and is not being done by a multipartisan team, it does appear to point to some legitimate examples of bias and sourcing concerns. 

Conclusion

Some Americans may see this portal as an unfair use of taxpayer dollars; others may support it. For media bias analysis to be truly trusted by all sides, it requires a measured approach. That’s why AllSides uses a multipartisan team and transparent methodology that incorporates feedback from both everyday Americans and experts on the left, center, and right. (Sign up to help us rate bias here.) It's why our bias categories themselves are well-defined, not sensational (like “Left-wing lunacy”). It’s also why we point out media bias as it appears on both sides of the political spectrum. We give readers an honest view so they can get the full picture, rather than weaponizing bias analysis to reinforce our own political agenda. (We couldn’t even do that if we tried, since our team is transparently made up of people on the left, center, and right — we wouldn't even be able to agree on a political agenda!)

One-sided media bias analysis may be a useful tool for that group to achieve a political point, but it is not going to move the needle on hyperpolarization, nor reinforce standards of objective journalism. The left and center taxpayers and journalists alike will likely thumb their nose at the White House’s analysis, while the right will feel satisfied exposing their political enemies. 

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

This piece was reviewed by Emily Allen, News Editor & Bias Analyst (Left bias).

Are you a newsroom wanting to measure and mitigate bias? Learn about AllSides Bias Audits and Balance Certification™ for your newsroom here.