CBS News (Online)

About CBS News (Online)'s Bias Rating

CBS News (Online) is featured on the AllSides Media Bias Chart™.

CBS News (Online) is a news media source with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Lean Left.

Note: AllSides rates the bias of online media only, not print, television, or radio content.

What a "Lean Left" Rating Means

Sources with an AllSides Media Bias Rating of Lean Left display media bias in ways that moderately align with liberal, progressive, or left-wing thought and/or policy agendas. A Lean Left bias is a moderately liberal rating on the political spectrum.

• CBS Bias Rated Lean Left in May 2021 Blind Bias Survey

CBS News Rated Lean Left in April/May 2021 Blind Bias Survey

On average, people across the political spectrum rated CBS news as Lean Left in our April/May 2021 Blind Bias Survey.

A total of 1,053 people rated the bias of CBS in this survey. The average rating for CBS News from people across the political spectrum — people who identified as Left, Lean Left, Center, Lean Right, or Right — was Lean Left.

Among the groups of people who self-identified as Left, Lean Left, Center, or Lean Right, a plurality of respondents rated CBS News as Center. A plurality of respondents who rated themselves as Right rated CBS News as Lean Left. The second most common response for CBS from people with a Right bias was Center; the second most common response from people from all other bias groups was Lean Left.

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As of September 2024, people have voted on the AllSides Media Bias Rating for CBS News (Online). On average, those who disagree with our rating think this source has a Lean Left bias.

As of April 2017, a small majority of 1,300 AllSides users disagreed with this bias rating, which was consistent with July 2016, when a small majority of nearly 600 users disagreed with our rating of Lean Left. 

As of September 2024, AllSides has high confidence in our Lean Left rating for CBS News (Online). Two or more bias reviews have affirmed this rating or the source is transparent about bias.

Additional Information

According to Wikipedia, "CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the CBS Evening News, CBS This Morning, news magazine programs CBS News Sunday Morning, 60 Minutes, and 48 Hours, and Sunday morning political affairs program Face the Nation."

Third-party Accusations of Bias

According to a study by The Economist, which looked at whether news outlets used words more often associated with Democrats and Republicans and assigned those outlets an ideological score, CBS’s evening news had a Democratic leaning of around 1.5 Democrat-leaning phrases per 10,000 in 2017. By 2022, its left-of-center slant had grown to 2.5.

Political Contributions by CBS Employees

In the 2008 election, CBS employees, along with the employees of two other two major broadcast television networks, donated $1,020,816 to the Democratic Party, while donating $142,863 to the Republican Party, according to an analysis by The Washington Examiner of data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. (AllSides does not factor this data into its media bias ratings for these networks, but provides them as an FYI to our readers).

Political Bias of CBS News' Audience

According to the 2014 Pew Research Study, Where News Audiences Fit on the Political Spectrum, 40% of CBS News’s audience holds political values to the political left or left-of-center. About 20% of CBS News's audience holds right or right-of-center political values (compared with 38% of all respondents to the survey). Roughly 39% of CBS News's audience is considered to have mixed or center-aligned political values (compared with 36% of all respondents to the survey).

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Owner: CBS Corporation

CBS news is owned by ViacomCBS. ViacomCBS “has operations in virtually every field of media and entertainment, including broadcast television, cable television, local television, radio, advertising, publishing, music and motion pictures.” Bob Bakish is the president and CEO of ViacomCBS. CBS is publicly traded.

Financing and ownership information last updated February 22, 2021. If you think this information is out of date or needs to be updated, please contact us.