How ViewSkew works
ViewSkew collects US political headlines from many outlets, groups the ones covering the same story, and shows where each outlet sits on a 0–10 political scale. We link to the original publishers; we never copy article text.
The scale
0 is far left, 5 is dead center, 10 is far right. Tile colors run blue → purple → red, so a perfectly centered outlet is purple.
Where outlet ratings come from
Ratings belong to the outlet, not to individual articles, and describe its US politics coverage overall. They are editorial estimates informed by where several public, independent media-bias raters tend to agree, then placed on a 10-point scale. They are not scientific measurements, they will not match any single rater exactly, and reasonable people disagree. Outlets are re-reviewed periodically, and anyone can ask for a change (see below).
An opinion piece reflects its author more than its outlet, so those articles carry an Opinion tag.
How stories are grouped
Headlines (and short feed summaries) are compared with a plain text-similarity algorithm, no AI model. Articles from the last 48 hours that share distinctive names, places and events are placed in one story. Grouping is automatic and can be wrong; if two stories are merged or split incorrectly, tell us.
Story scores and headlines
- A story’s score is the average of its distinct outlets’ ratings. The dots on each meter show every outlet; the large marker is the average.
- The tile headline is taken from the most centrist outlet covering the story, to keep the wording as neutral as possible.
- “No coverage found from this side yet” means none of the tracked outlets on that side has published on the story. It may simply be a feed we don’t track.
Freshness
The site refreshes automatically about every three hours. If it ever falls behind, a banner appears at the top of the home page.
Corrections
To suggest a rating change or report a grouping error, open an issue on the project’s GitHub page.
Outlets and ratings
| Outlet | Rating | Basis |
|---|
Support the Project
ViewSkew is completely free, with no ads, no subscriptions, and no paywalls. If you find this tool helpful in seeing through the noise, consider buying us a coffee! Every little bit helps keep the lights on and the code improving.