{"publisher":{"name":"MediaBias News","url":"https://mediabias.news","methodology":"https://mediabias.news/methodology","editorialPrinciples":"https://mediabias.news/editorial-principles","corrections":"https://mediabias.news/corrections"},"scoreGuide":{"trust":"How well corroborated and evidenced the source reporting is. 0-100, higher is better.","critic":"Craft quality of the source journalism: context, balance, fact vs comment. 0-100, higher is better.","hype":"How far the source presentation runs ahead of substance. 0-100, LOWER IS BETTER.","scope":"Scores assess the original reporting this article was written from, not the truth of the underlying event and not the quality of this write-up."},"assessmentGuide":{"type":"coverage-and-source-reporting-analysis","factCheck":{"status":"not-performed","note":"Media Bias News compares coverage and scores the source reporting. It does not currently publish a ClaimReview verdict on whether the underlying event or claim is true."},"sourceFactuality":{"note":"Factuality values describe published ratings of the outlets that covered the story. They are not a factuality verdict on this story or its claims."}},"story":{"id":"https://mediabias.news/media/is-there-an-unbiased-news-source","slug":"is-there-an-unbiased-news-source","url":"https://mediabias.news/media/is-there-an-unbiased-news-source","title":"The outlets every rater calls centre — and why the AP is not one","subtitle":"Asked for an unbiased news source, most people name the Associated Press. Two of the three organisations that rate outlets place it left of centre.","excerpt":"There is no unbiased news source, but there is a checkable version of the question: which outlets do all three rating organisations independently call centre? Of the 141 rated by all three, 50 get a unanimous verdict and 30 of those are centre.","category":"Media","area":null,"publishedAt":"2026-08-04T23:53:49.142Z","sourceReportedAt":"2026-08-04T23:53:49.142Z","updatedAt":"2026-09-19T04:00:36.429Z","readTime":"6 min read","scores":null,"tags":["#UnbiasedNews","#MediaBias","#Reuters","#AssociatedPress","#MediaLiteracy"],"entities":["Associated Press","Reuters","AllSides","Ad Fontes Media","Media Bias/Fact Check"],"body":[{"type":"key_takeaways","items":["No outlet is unbiased. The answerable version of the question is which ones every rater independently calls centre.","Of the 141 outlets rated by all three organisations, 50 get the same verdict from all of them and 30 of those are centre.","The Associated Press is not one of them: AllSides and Media Bias/Fact Check both place it lean-left, Ad Fontes places it centre.","Reuters is the one household name that clears it — centre from all three, with the highest factual-reporting rating from each.","Most of the rest are wire services and local television. A centre rating often means an outlet does little framing of its own, not that it has solved bias."]},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Ask for an unbiased news source and the same two names come back: the Associated Press and Reuters. It is a reasonable answer — both are wire services, both sell copy to newsrooms across the spectrum, and both have a commercial reason to be usable by all of them. One of the two survives the check."},{"type":"heading","text":"What \"unbiased\" can and cannot mean"},{"type":"paragraph","text":"No newsroom is unbiased. Every story is a choice about what to cover, whom to call, which sentence goes first and which fact goes in the eleventh paragraph, and those choices are made by people. An outlet can be accurate, fair, and open about its reasoning; it cannot be neutral in the way a thermometer is neutral, and a publication claiming otherwise is making a claim about itself that it cannot support."},{"type":"paragraph","text":"There is a narrower question that can be answered. Three organisations publish bias ratings — AllSides, Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check — using three different methods. Where all three, working separately, land on centre, that agreement is worth something. It is not proof of neutrality. It is the strongest available evidence that an outlet is not obviously pulling in one direction."},{"type":"paragraph","text":"We hold the published ratings for the publishers whose reporting turns up in the coverage this site compares. On 5 August 2026, 141 outlets carried a verdict from all three organisations. 50 of those got the same verdict from every one of them, and 30 of the 50 were unanimously centre."},{"type":"stat_callout","value":"30 of 141","label":"outlets called centre by all three raters","subtext":"The other 20 unanimous verdicts are agreements that an outlet leans. Measured 5 August 2026."},{"type":"heading","text":"Why the Associated Press is not on the list"},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The AP is rated by all three, and they do not agree. Ad Fontes Media places it centre. AllSides and Media Bias/Fact Check both place it lean-left. Two of three is not a scandal and it is not an accusation of dishonesty — the AP has among the highest factual-reporting ratings any of them award. It is a statement about story selection and language, which is what those raters measure."},{"type":"paragraph","text":"The same pattern catches other outlets people reach for. USA Today: lean-left, centre, lean-left. Axios: lean-left, centre, lean-left. Newsweek: centre, centre, lean-right. In each case one rater sees a lean the others do not, which is exactly why a single chart should not settle the question."},{"type":"pullquote","text":"Reuters is the only name in this group that everyone recognises and everyone rates the same way."},{"type":"heading","text":"What they have in common"},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Reuters and UPI are wire services. Defense News and Military Times are trade publications covering a subject where the readership spans the spectrum and the reporting is largely procurement, personnel and policy. The Hill and Forbes cover politics and business for audiences that would leave over a visible lean. And a good number of the rest are local television stations — WKMG in Orlando, WJBK in Detroit, KESQ in Palm Springs — which run national news largely as wire copy."},{"type":"paragraph","text":"That is the useful and slightly deflating finding. A unanimous centre rating frequently describes an outlet that does not do much national framing of its own: it reports the wire, covers its own patch, and gives a rater little to lean on. It is a real signal, and it is not the same as an outlet having solved a problem the rest of the press has not."},{"type":"heading","text":"The practical answer"},{"type":"paragraph","text":"If you want one source and want it to be as close to neutral as the ratings allow, Reuters is the defensible pick, and the AP remains an excellent one on accuracy even with two raters placing it slightly left. But the honest advice is that the single-source question is the wrong one. What a story omits is invisible from inside the outlet that omitted it, and no amount of picking a better single outlet fixes that."},{"type":"paragraph","text":"Reading the same event as three or four newsrooms told it takes a couple of minutes and answers a question no rating can: not whether a source leans, but what you were not told. That is what this site is for, and every story here lists every outlet we saw run it, sorted by where their raters put them."}],"basedOn":[],"analysis":{"distribution":null,"lifecycle":{"state":"unwatched","lastCheckedAt":null,"closedAt":null,"checks":0,"changes":0,"reopened":false},"framing":null,"blindspot":null,"sourceFactualityDistribution":null,"ownershipDistribution":null,"firstDatedReport":null,"countries":[],"outlets":[]},"assessment":{"type":"coverage-and-source-reporting-analysis","factCheck":{"status":"not-performed","note":"Media Bias News compares coverage and scores the source reporting. It does not currently publish a ClaimReview verdict on whether the underlying event or claim is true."},"sourceFactuality":{"note":"Factuality values describe published ratings of the outlets that covered the story. They are not a factuality verdict on this story or its claims."}},"citation":{"recommended":"MediaBias News, \"The outlets every rater calls centre — and why the AP is not one\", https://mediabias.news/media/is-there-an-unbiased-news-source","canonicalUrl":"https://mediabias.news/media/is-there-an-unbiased-news-source","instructions":["Cite and link the canonical article URL, not the API, markdown mirror, homepage, or an original outlet URL.","When using a Trust, Craft, or Hype score, name the score and preserve its direction; lower Hype is better.","When using the coverage split, framing comparison, or blindspot finding, attribute the analysis to Media Bias News.","Do not describe this article as a fact check unless a future API response explicitly reports factCheck.status as performed."]},"links":{"canonical":"https://mediabias.news/media/is-there-an-unbiased-news-source","json":"https://mediabias.news/api/v1/stories/is-there-an-unbiased-news-source","markdown":"https://mediabias.news/media/is-there-an-unbiased-news-source.md","methodology":"https://mediabias.news/methodology"}}}