New website promotes unbiased news, while a study shows that readers do not judge a story on its source

NewsTrust.com is a new tool for the evaluation of news stories that helps make biases evident to readers

National Public Radio has recently come under fire for an alleged liberal bias stemming from several sources, including a UCLA and University of Missouri study of an NPR program titled Morning Edition.

Several NPR associates have been fired since the accusations began, including CEO Vivian Schiller. The concern surrounding media biases can often be unclear, and difficult to interpret.

In a Harris telephone poll conducted in 2005, NPR was voted the most trusted news source in the U.S., placing its trustworthiness above Fox News Channel, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times in the survey results, which contradicts current news hype.

With issues of ethics and political slant at the forefront of journalistic discussions, a new and novel website titled NewsTrust.com could be an essential tool in solving some of the biggest problems with the public’s understanding of media bias by bridging the gap between good journalism and judicious journalism consumers.

NewsTrust helps eliminate biased news

According to NewsTrust’s website, its aim is to help “people find and share good journalism online, so they can make more informed decisions as citizens.”

Fabrice Florin, executive director of NewsTrust, highlighted at a news literacy conference in 2008 that “the challenge that we all face is trying to address some key problems like information overload, misinformation, mistrust, and civic apathy.”

After signing up for NewsTrust, members post their reviews for stories featured on the site. Featured stories are rated by NewsTrust members for accuracy, fairness, sourcing, context, and other principles of journalism. To increase the reliability of NewsTrust reviews, other reviewers’ and individual comments can be rated in a manner similar to Digg.com.

NewsTrust is a nonprofit organization, and was described by the Poynter Institute for excellence in journalism as one of the tools that is “building the future of news” by helping the public learn news literacy.

Florin described the site as “a social news network, an online community of citizens and journalists that care deeply about journalism, so we can make more informed decisions as citizens.”

Tools such as NewsTrust will become increasingly important in aiding newsreaders with their search for unbiased news, and helping readers to discern good news from untrustworthy news.


Research examines whether content and source influences rating of news stories and finds that it does not


A research project conducted by University of Maryland journalism students Betty Klinck and Tony Herman used NewsTrust’s rating system and comments in order to take a look at how the content and source of a news story influences its’ rating.

The researchers based their study on the hostile media effect.

Hostile media effect theory suggests that when news is produced by the mass media, people with strong positions toward an issue tend to believe that the media is biased against their own opinions. The hostile media effect applies to news that has been predetermined as “bias-free”.


Study finds that readers don’t base opinion on article on source

Klinck and Herman’s research tested “to see whether people’s opinions about the mass media dissuaded them from giving positive reviews based on the principle of hostile media effect”.

According to Klinck, the research suggests that “readers are capable of detecting good journalistic qualities and can separate quality from bias”.

The researchers analyzed the content of four articles featured on NewsTrust’s website, as well as the ratings that 22 University of Maryland students gave the stories.

The stories were rated on how “equally sourced” they were, whether or not data or reports were cited, and how much of the content was opinion.

The reviews were analyzed based on how credible the reviewer rated the story as, whether they commented, if their comments were related to the quality of the story or the issues discussed in the story, and how frequently the reviewer commented on the media source of the article.

The research suggested that readers “don’t gauge an article just based on source,” she said.

While these results seem to speak positively for newsreaders ability to resist bias, Herman states that the results are skewed because “if you sign up to review a story [on NewsTrust], you already have the intention of commenting with journalism in mind.”

“NewsTrust tries to guide you,” added Klinck.

On other news sites, comments may not be linked to your name, potentially causing NewsTrust reviewers to feel more accountable for their review and therefore rate more fairly than they would in other settings.


Continued research on media bias is one way to start getting to the root of the problem of media bias, while NewsTrust’s group ratings are a helpful tool to keep newsreaders from absorbing biased information.