Des Moines Register media bias and reliability
AllSides, Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check place Des Moines Register in the centre. We have seen it on 4 published stories of ours.
The short answers
Is Des Moines Register biased?
AllSides, Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check place Des Moines Register in the centre. An outlet rating describes a broad pattern in its output, not every article it publishes.
Is Des Moines Register left or right?
AllSides, Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check place Des Moines Register in the centre. In the three-way grouping used on story pages, that puts it under Centre.
Is Des Moines Register reliable?
The factual-reliability assessments we hold for Des Moines Register are Ad Fontes Media: Very high factuality; Media Bias/Fact Check: High factuality. These are outlet-level assessments, not a guarantee that every report is correct.
What Des Moines Register has been covering
Our account of each story, written from every outlet that ran it, with Des Moines Register’s own report linked underneath.
Iowa lawmakers will convene to consider increasing state tax incentives for a proposed $15 billion steel plant. The project, announced by President Donald Trump, aims to boost economic and national security, though questions remain about the company's site commitment and the scale of potential benefits.
Des Moines Register reported it asKim Reynolds calls special session to pass Iowa steel plant ... (opens Des Moines Register in a new tab)
Two Republican members of the House of Representatives from Iowa voted in favour of a war powers resolution aimed at halting military action in Iran. This vote was the first of its kind for these two representatives.
Des Moines Register reported it asNunn, Miller-Meeks break with GOP, vote to limit Trump's war powers (opens Des Moines Register in a new tab)
Two protesters were arrested outside the Republican National Committee's midterm convention in Dallas. Mounted police and officers in riot gear were deployed as demonstrators marched near the venue. Organisers estimated up to 10,000 people would attend separate rallies.
Des Moines Register reported it asWhich Iowa GOP candidates are skipping Trump's midterm convention? (opens Des Moines Register in a new tab)
Republican Chris McGowan, running for Iowa's 4th Congressional District, told voters at the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox on 17 August 2026 that the US should only enter wars after diplomacy fails and an 'imminent threat' is established. He also opposed eminent domain for carbon capture pipelines, citing landowner rights.
Des Moines Register reported it asCandidate Chris McGowan urges 'prudent use of arms' at Register's Soapbox (opens Des Moines Register in a new tab)
Who says so
3 organisations have published a rating for this outlet, in their own words. Where they disagree, the disagreement is the useful part and it is left standing.
How reliably it reports fact
A rating of the newsroom in general, by others, and a different thing from the Trust score we publish on each story, which judges one piece of reporting.
Very high factuality
Who owns it
- GannettMedia Conglomeratedirect owner
Where it publishes from
- Publishes from
- Des Moines, Polk County, Iowa, United States
- Official site
- desmoinesregister.com
- Seen publishing on
- desmoinesregister.com
- Access
- Metered: some articles are readable, some are not
- Wikipedia
- Entry
What we have seen ourselves
Counted across the stories this site has published, which is the only denominator a reader can check: every one of them has a page, and every page lists the reports it was written from.
- Stories
- 4
- Reports listed
- 4
- We could read
- 1
- First seen
- 18 August 2026
3 of those reports were paywalled or blocked to us. Our reading of this outlet is built on the 1 we could open, not on everything it published.
A blindspot is measured against one side of the spectrum. Des Moines Register is rated centre, so there is no side for it to be counted against and we publish no figure here.
Across the 4 stories of ours where at least three of the reports we listed carried a time, we logged no report earlier than Des Moines Register’s on 1 of them. Overall it filed a median of 13 hours after the earliest report we logged.
Measured 2 October 2026. Last seen in a coverage list 2 October 2026. Ratings pulled 17 September 2026.
Other outlets rated the same way
Publishers carrying the same published leaning as Des Moines Register, also publishing from United States, ordered by how often we have seen them on a story. Sharing a rating is not the same as being alike.
Think this page is wrong?
The leanings above are published by AllSides, Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check, and we republish them rather than make them. If you think one is misapplied, the strongest place to say so is with the organisation that made it, and every verdict here links to their page.
What we are responsible for is everything else: the ownership chain, where Des Moines Register publishes from, which of our stories we have listed it on, and whether we have the right publisher at all. Tell us what is wrong and an editor reads it.
Report something wrong on this page
Anything we correct is written up in the public corrections log. We do not publish reader votes as a rating, because an unattributed rating is the thing this site exists to argue against.
Every rating on this page is a named third party’s published work, republished with its author and, where one exists, a link to it. Our own coverage record is the section we measure ourselves. Neither is a judgement of any individual report: those are scored story by story, and the reasoning is on our methodology page.