emptywheel media bias and reliability
Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check place emptywheel as leaning left. We have seen it on 9 published stories of ours.
The short answers
Is emptywheel biased?
Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check place emptywheel as leaning left. An outlet rating describes a broad pattern in its output, not every article it publishes.
Is emptywheel left or right?
Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check place emptywheel as leaning left. In the three-way grouping used on story pages, that puts it under Left.
Is emptywheel reliable?
The factual-reliability assessments we hold for emptywheel are Ad Fontes Media: High factuality; Media Bias/Fact Check: High factuality. These are outlet-level assessments, not a guarantee that every report is correct.
What emptywheel has been covering
Our account of each story, written from every outlet that ran it, with emptywheel’s own report linked underneath.
Representative Thomas Massie has introduced articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Massie alleges Hegseth continued U.S. military operations in Iran without congressional approval and criticizes his actions in Venezuela and Yemen.
emptywheel reported it asTom Massie's Impeachment Gambit (opens emptywheel 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.
emptywheel reported it asTrump Prioritizes Golf and Horst Wessel Over 9/11 (opens emptywheel in a new tab)
US Senator Jon Ossoff criticised Donald Trump’s executive assistant Natalie Harp in a campaign speech, calling her part of the president’s detachment from leadership. The White House responded with personal insults, while Harp’s influence and proximity to Trump drew scrutiny from outlets across the political spectrum.
emptywheel reported it asNatalie Harp Is the Unsupervised Gatekeeper to the Man with the Nuclear Buttons (opens emptywheel in a new tab)
Natalie Harp, a close aide to Donald Trump known as his 'human printer', has become a focus of media attention after a Democratic senator mocked their relationship. Reports describe her role in printing articles and social media posts for Trump, while her estranged brother calls her dedication unhealthy.
emptywheel reported it asNatalie Harp Is the Unsupervised Gatekeeper to the Man with the Nuclear Buttons (opens emptywheel in a new tab)
US prosecutors investigate Democratic fundraising firm linked to Trump trial judge's daughter
Trust 86The U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago has spent a year investigating Authentic Campaigns Inc., a Democratic fundraising firm once co-owned by Loren Merchan, daughter of the judge who oversaw Donald Trump’s hush-money trial. The probe centres on client communications and a $468 payment from Kamala Harris’s campaign.
emptywheel reported it asAmong the First Things Attorney Matthew Skiba Did Was Target Democrats (opens emptywheel in a new tab)
The Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation into left-wing groups in Minnesota following the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents. The probe, which included undercover surveillance and financial subpoenas, targeted unions and activist organisations but concluded without evidence of wrongdoing. Fifteen organisers were later indicted under a national security directive.
emptywheel reported it asTrump's Government Responded to Murdering Alex Pretti by Spying on the Entire Anti-ICE Community in Minnesota (opens emptywheel in a new tab)
US President Donald Trump flew secretly from Turkey on an alternate military aircraft last month after an Iranian assassination threat was detected, according to reports. The White House had stated he was aboard Air Force One, but the press was left on a decoy flight as part of an elaborate ruse to conceal his departure.
emptywheel reported it asFrom Flying Bribery Palace to Failed Leak Investigation to Catering Truck (opens emptywheel in a new tab)
Donald Trump accused oil executives of profiteering from his Iran policy and US Attorney Jeanine Pirou of altering court filings in a Monday speech. His approval rating fell to one-third in a CNN/SSRS poll, while Republican senators insisted on written proof that a $1.8bn Justice Department fund was permanently abolished.
emptywheel reported it asThe Davey Hearn Motion to Dismiss ALSO Debunks Trump's Vandalism Claim (opens emptywheel in a new tab)
The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote Tuesday on advancing acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination after Republican senators secured written assurances that a $1.8 billion fund tied to the Trump-IRS settlement would not proceed. Democrats argue the guarantees fall short of permanent protections.
emptywheel reported it asSenate Republicans Rush to Immunize Money Launder-in-Chief's Tax Crimes (opens emptywheel in a new tab)
Who says so
2 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.
High factuality
Who owns it
We hold no ownership record for emptywheel.
Where it publishes from
- Official site
- emptywheel.net
- Seen publishing on
- emptywheel.net
- Access
- Free to read
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
- 9
- Reports listed
- 9
- We could read
- 0
- First seen
- 4 August 2026
9 of those reports were paywalled or blocked to us. Our reading of this outlet is built on the 0 we could open, not on everything it published.
On 1 of those stories, outlets rated left were largely absent from the coverage and emptywheel ran the story anyway.
Across the 9 stories of ours where at least three of the reports we listed carried a time, another outlet was always ahead of emptywheel: its report arrived a median of 28 hours after the earliest one we logged.
Measured 22 September 2026. Last seen in a coverage list 21 September 2026. Ratings pulled 8 September 2026.
Other outlets rated the same way
Publishers carrying the same published leaning as emptywheel, 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 emptywheel 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.