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Introduction & On Evaluating Sources




Welcome everyone! Thanks for visiting my blog. I'm excited to read your blog posts, and I hope you enjoy mine. 

This blog is called A Balanced Take because I plan to analyze the coverage of major global news sources for partisan leanings, then use what I have uncovered to craft my own summary of the news event that is as neutral and fact-based as possible. Essentially, each post will be a comparison of articles published by a few major media organizations on the same news story.

I will use the Ad Fontes Media Bias chart & AllSides Media Bias Chart to give myself a starting point for sources that might display a skew toward right or left wing coverage. My goal is to choose widely-read sources, including some that tend to skew toward a certain side of the political spectrum, thus encapsulating the varied perspectives of the mass media system. Within my analysis, I will also feature sources that are providing a more neutral view of the story. Ultimately, I hope to demonstrate the increasingly partisan leanings of mass media and journalistic organizations while combating “truthiness” by creating my own take on the story that reports only the facts while leaving out the bias and judgements I have uncovered in my analysis of the media coverage. 

I'm well-aware that not every story that comes from a certain source will be inundated with bias, so I am not choosing the articles that I feature solely on where they were published. Instead, I will evaluate the article's headline and content for language and framing that skews toward one side or the other of the political spectrum. An equal number of left, right, and center headlines will be featured in each post. If I believe that a particular organization's report exhibits signs of partisanship, I will explain my reasoning in my analysis. I welcome any debate about my judgment of partisanship in the comments of each post!

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