The Free Press

About The Free Press's Bias Rating

The Free Press is a news media source with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Center.

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.

Details

Note: The Free Press is not to be confused with advocacy group Free Press, which AllSides rates separately.

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The Free Press Rated Center in Dec. 2022 Independent Review

An AllSides Dec. 2022 Independent Review returned a Center bias rating for The Free Press.

An AllSides reviewer noted The Free Press runs primarily commentary. They noted an op-ed by former Trump administration Attorney General William P. Barr urging Trump to step back from a 2024 presidential run and a piece by The Free Press founder Bari Weiss on the 2022 midterms stating that Trump was "poison" in his endorsements of candidates. Prominent story choices included a focus on Judaism and Israel (perhaps because Weiss is Jewish), such as "The State of the Black-Jewish Relationship in America" and a conversation with Israel's new prime minister. Other pieces highlighted the U.S. culture war, such as a piece on "The Hijacking of Pediatric Medicine", which explored left-wing bias in the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The piece begins with the disclaimer, "One of the main focuses of this newsletter’s reporting is the way time-honored institutions of American life have been hijacked or corrupted." A piece from a former investigative reporter in China explored the dangers of TikTok.

The reviewer noted that opinion and analysis pieces were not clearly labeled, however, the site does not publish original, breaking news, stating that it publishes "investigative stories and provocative commentary." Magazine or commentary-style publications often lack labels on content; labels are more important in publications that share both news reports and commentary.

Common Sense Rated Center in Oct. 2022 Independent Review

The Free Press was formerly a newsletter called Common Sense. An AllSides October 2022 Independent Review returned a bias rating of Center for Common Sense. 

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

As of April 2024, AllSides has low or initial confidence in our Center rating for The Free Press. If we perform more bias reviews and gather consistent data, this confidence level will increase.

Additional Information

Originally called Common Sense, The Free Press was founded by journalist Bari Weiss, former op-ed staff editor and writer on culture and politics at The New York Times. What began as a Substack newsletter grew into a media outlet that re-branded as The Free Press in Dec. 2022. In an introductory post, the outlet wrote [retrieved Dec. 12, 2022]:

As the gap between what we’re allowed to say in public and how we talk in private grows, so does our distrust—in power, in the press, and in one another.

Maybe your moment came while reading about school lockdowns. Or maybe it was the obvious political bias distorting even the most basic news stories. Maybe you’ve seen reporters being activists on social media, then feigning objectivity in their stories.

But at some point, you might have noticed that what you were reading didn’t reflect what you were seeing with your own eyes.  

At some point, maybe you noticed that the people paid to tell you about the world as it is were instead telling you about the world as they wished it to be.

At some point, maybe you noticed that rather than conveying complexity—even if it was inconvenient or uncomfortable—the press was in the business of giving their readers, their viewers, and their listeners confirmation. Confirmation that they were right, confirmation that their political opponents were wrong.

...

The Free Press is a media company built on the ideals that were once the bedrock of great American journalism: honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence. We publish investigative stories and provocative commentary about the world as it actually is—with the quality once expected from the legacy press, but with the fearlessness of the new.

We place a special emphasis on subjects and stories that others ignore or misrepresent. We always aim to highlight multiple perspectives on complicated subjects. And we don’t allow ideology to stand in the way of searching for the truth.

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