MarketWatch

About MarketWatch's Bias Rating

MarketWatch is featured on the AllSides Media Bias Chart™.

MarketWatch is a news media source with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Center.

MarketWatch is a financial information website offering news and analysis on stocks, business and politics. MarketWatch's website was launched in 1997 by three former Bloomberg London editors. It became a subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company in 2005, when it was bought for $530 million. Its head editor is former New York Post editor Jeremy Olshan.

What a "Center" Rating Means

Sources with an AllSides Media Bias Rating of Center either do not show much predictable media bias, display a balance of articles with left and right biases, or equally balance left and right perspectives.

Center doesn't mean better! A Center media bias rating does not necessarily mean a source is totally unbiased, neutral, perfectly reasonable, or credible, just as Left and Right don't necessarily mean extreme, wrong, unreasonable, or not credible. AllSides encourages people to read outlets across the political spectrum.

MarketWatch Moved from Lean Right to Center in Oct. 2020 Editorial Review

AllSides moved MarketWatch’s Media Bias Rating from Lean Right to Center following an Oct. 2020 Editorial Review. The AllSides team, which contains people from the left, center, and right, noted that MarketWatch’s reporting did not seem to lean heavily one way or the other politically. During the Editorial Review, conducted just two weeks before the 2020 presidential election, most members of the team noted that MarketWatch was consistent about citing their sources and using full quotes from both sides. The team found MarketWatch didn't reveal much political bias, but when it did, there were a relatively balanced number of articles that were for or against liberal or conservative ideas, politicians or policies. The team noted MarketWatch did a good job clearly labeling opinion pieces; however, some analysis-style content was not labeled and appeared as news. At the time, the team noted a pro-Universal Basic Income (UBI) opinion piece next to an anti-UBI piece.

While a team member with a Lean Left bias said they didn’t see much sensationalism, a type of media bias, a team member with a Lean Right bias said they saw some, pointing to the site’s images and graphics, including one in which Donald Trump appeared to look guilty and one where Rudy Guiliani was shown making a bizarre expression.

The Lean Right team member also noted a slight Lean Left or anti-Trump bias in MarketWatch, including the aforementioned article on Trump in which the writer included their subjective analysis of Trump's attitudes and tweets, stating, “Trump’s presidential tweets have been rife with self-glorification ever since he took office. According to the Trump Twitter Archive, he has tweeted about the “stock market” 157 times.” In addition, they pointed to an article on Trump’s healthcare executive orders that prominently mentioned that analysts called the orders “symbolic,” but the article did not state exactly what the orders did, preventing readers from deciding for themselves if they were meaningful or symbolic. MarketWatch also appeared to post mostly left-wing positions on social justice-oriented opinion pieces when it came to cultural issues in Summer 2020, such as one claiming “hiring and promoting women police officers could bring real justice reform and make communities safer”, another calling to “defund the police”, and another calling for corporations to “act on racial injustice.”

Overall, the AllSides team found the website to not display much bias one way or the other, even if some individual opinion pieces or news pieces may have had a slight lean, as is the case for all media outlets.

Previous Bias Ratings

MarketWatch's initial AllSides Media Bias Rating™ was Lean Right. It was changed in Oct. 2020 to Center.

Top of Page

As of April 2024, people have voted on the AllSides Media Bias Rating for MarketWatch. On average, those who disagree with our rating think this source has a Lean Left bias.

In Oct. 2020, we found that 379 community members disagreed with our rating of Lean Right. When asked what they thought the rating for MarketWatch should be, the average of their suggested ratings for MarketWatch actually came out to be Lean Right. Over the 6 months between May and Oct 2020, on average our community rated MarketWatch as Lean Right.

As of April 2024, AllSides has medium confidence in our Center rating for MarketWatch. An Editorial Review or Blind Bias Survey has affirmed this rating, or multiple reviews have returned differing results. If we perform more bias reviews and gather consistent data, this confidence level will increase.

Owner: Dow Jones & Company