Is Mandatory biased?
Ad Fontes Media places Mandatory in the centre. We have seen it on 4 published stories of ours.
The short answers
Is Mandatory biased?
Ad Fontes Media places Mandatory in the centre. An outlet rating describes a broad pattern in its output, not every article it publishes.
Is Mandatory left or right?
Ad Fontes Media places Mandatory in the centre. In the three-way grouping used on story pages, that puts it under Centre.
Is Mandatory reliable?
The factual-reliability assessments we hold for Mandatory are Ad Fontes Media: Mixed factuality. These are outlet-level assessments, not a guarantee that every report is correct.
What Mandatory has been covering
Our account of each story, written from every outlet that ran it, with Mandatory’s own report linked underneath.
US President Donald Trump rejected reports of munitions shortages, stating the US holds 'massive amounts' of weapons and warning that leakers of military inventory data face prosecution. Congressional documents show a $67bn emergency funding request, including $18.2bn to replace advanced interceptors and missiles.
Mandatory reported it asDonald Trump Thought Iran Missile Shortage Was Fixed, Then He Confronted Pete Hegseth (opens Mandatory in a new tab)
Donald Trump stopped a toddler from wandering off stage at a Nevada campaign event, later joking he did not want the child to 'be Biden and fall off the stage'. The incident occurred during a speech promoting his 'no tax on tips' policy and Trump Accounts savings programme, with the toddler’s parents invited on stage.
Mandatory reported it asDonald Trump Chases After Toddler on Stage, Then Cracks a Joe Biden Joke (opens Mandatory 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.
Mandatory reported it asDonald Trump Won’t Give Up His Reflecting Pool Vandalism Story (opens Mandatory in a new tab)
President Donald Trump directed contractors to redo the White House helipad after expressing dissatisfaction with its appearance and the slope of the South Lawn. The $5m project, funded by Lockheed Martin, was intended to prevent grass-burning from Marine One helicopters but has faced delays ahead of a September state visit.
Mandatory reported it asDonald Trump Didn't Like His New White House Helipad, Now It's Being Redone (opens Mandatory in a new tab)
Who says so
One organisation has published a rating for this outlet. Where they disagree, the disagreement is the useful part and it is left standing.
- Ad Fontes MediacenterCheck it
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.
Mixed factuality
- Ad Fontes MediamixedCheck it
Who owns it
We hold no ownership record for Mandatory.
Where it publishes from
- Official site
- mandatory.com
- Seen publishing on
- mandatory.com
- 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
- 4
- Reports listed
- 4
- We could read
- 1
- First seen
- 5 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. Mandatory 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, another outlet was always ahead of Mandatory: its report arrived a median of 35 hours after the earliest one we logged.
Measured 9 August 2026. Last seen in a coverage list 9 August 2026. Ratings pulled 9 August 2026.
Other outlets rated the same way
Publishers carrying the same published leaning as Mandatory, 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 Mandatory 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.