Wall Street Journal (News)

About Wall Street Journal (News)

Wall Street Journal (News) is featured on the AllSides Media Bias Chart™.

Wall Street Journal (News) is a news media source with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Center.

Note: AllSides rates the media bias of The Wall Street Journal's editorial/opinion pages separately. This page refers to the media bias of Wall Street Journal's news section only.

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.

Learn more about Center ratings

• Wall Street Journal Rated Center in July 2021 AllSides Blind Bias Survey
• Wall Street Journal Rated Center in 2013 AllSides Blind Bias Survey

Wall Street Journal Rated Center in July 2021 AllSides Blind Bias Survey

In the July 2021 AllSides Blind Bias Survey, in which people across the political spectrum rated content from WSJ's news section without knowing the source, the average rating was Center.

On average, 1,195 people rated WSJ as Center. A majority of people who self-identified as having a Left, Lean Left, Center, or Lean Right bias rated WSJ as Center; a plurality of people with a Right biased rated it Center, with the second most common response for WSJ being Lean Right.

 

Wall Street Journal Rated Center in 2013 AllSides Blind Bias Survey

A 2013 AllSides Blind Bias Survey returned a Center bias rating for the Wall Street Journal. See more explanation of the 2013 blind bias survey results here.

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As of May 2023, people have voted on the AllSides Media Bias Rating for Wall Street Journal (News). On average, those who disagree with our rating think this source has a Center bias.

In late 2013 (Dec. 12, 2013), the majority of the AllSides community voted in agreement with the Center rating. As of May 15, 2016, over 4,000 votes from AllSides Community members showed the majority disagreed with the rating, but was evenly split on whether The Wall Street Journal news was Left or Right. The average of those votes was Center, with a raw score of 48.5 (with 50 representing perfect Center).

As of May 2023, AllSides has high confidence in our Center rating for Wall Street Journal (News). Three or more bias reviews have affirmed this rating or the source is transparent about bias.

Additional Information

The Wall Street Journal is an international, business-focused, daily newspaper based in New York City. A division of News Corp and published six days a week by Dow Jones & Company, the Journal is the most widely circulated newspaper in the United States. It has printed continuously since it was founded by Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser on July 8, 1889. Daily editions of the newspaper are posted on its website, which also includes Home, World, U.S., Politics, Economy, Business, Tech, Market, Arts, Life, Real Estate and Opinion sections.

Political Bias of WSJ Audience

A 2014 Pew Research Center survey, Where Audiences Fit on the Political Spectrum, found the Wall Street Journal's audience is "roughly evenly distributed across the ideological spectrum," with 21% of consumers being mostly liberal, 24% being of mixed political persuasion, and 22% being mostly conservative.

Third Party Studies and Comments on WSJ Bias

In a 2005 academic study, Tim Groseclose, a former professor of political science at UCLA, developed a measure, the Slant Quotient (S.Q.), a number that shows how often a news outlet cites one or more of some 200 think tanks. The bigger the S.Q., the more liberal the news outlet. He found the Wall Street Journal is left of center, with a 55.1 SQ. For comparison, he found the most liberal newspaper to be the Detroit Free Press (S.Q. = 81.5) and the New York Times to be very liberal (67.3).  He found WSJ to be more liberal than NPR or The New York Times. In the full report published in the November 2005 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the author notes:

"Irvine and Kincaid [2001] note that “The Journal has had a long-standing separation between its conservative editorial pages and its liberal news pages.” Sperry [2002] notes that the news division of the Journal sometimes calls the editorial division “Nazis.” “Fact is,” Sperry writes, “the Journal’s news and editorial departments are as politically polarized as North and South Korea.”"

Some on the left, such as writers for Slate, have claimed the newspaper acquired a rightward slant after falling under the control of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp in 2007. Others believe the news section to be balanced — according to CNN in 2007, the Journal's "newsroom staff has a reputation for non-partisan reporting." 

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