A FB friend posted this chart which purportedly places various news and opinion sources on a continuum of ideological bias. The problem with this of course is the bias of the one doing the placing.
It's not like the creator of the chart is extremely biased, but still it is worth examining her clear preconceptions.
The most fundamental preconception we can see is the characterization of the "mainstream"media as having "minimal partisan bias." This is clearly false. "mainstream" media outlets are rife with ideological bias. Notable for people like Dan Rather, Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews, George Stephanopolous, Rachel Maddow, Chuck Todd, etc, etc, the mainstream is hardly mainstream.
A far better measure of bias would be to examine the distribution of viewership along ideological lines. If the Left tends to gravitate towards a particular source of news, we can justifiably assume that the source has a leftist bias. If the Right prefers certain sources more, we can assume those sources are Right-biased.
Business Insider supplies us with this handy-dandy chart:
For the author's chart, this data would tend to shift her "center" towards the Right, making the "mainstream" lean Left.
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