Fox News is a flagship news source for conservatives. However, it receives criticism from many for having a strong conservative bias and, at times, problematic news coverage. This leads us to ask two important questions: how reliable is Fox News and how biased is its news coverage?
Note: This article is specifically about Fox News’ online website, not any of its television programming, unless noted otherwise.
How Does The Factual Rate News Sources?
The Factual analyzes more than 10,000 news stories every day to help readers find the most informative, least-biased articles. Our news-rating algorithm scores each article along four metrics: (1) cited sources and quotes, (2) publication history, (3) writing tone, and (4) author expertise. These scores combine in a weighted average we call a Factual Grade, which ranges from 0–100%. (See our How It Works page to learn more about our algorithm.)
For this study, we analyzed ~1,000 articles each from 240 news sources. The average Factual Grade for the entire dataset was 62.5%. Based on these averages, we can compare the performance of news sites across the media ecosystem. The entire dataset can be explored in greater detail here.
How Factual Is Fox News?
Fox News scored an average Factual Grade of 54.3%, placing it in the 16th percentile of our dataset. These low scores can be attributed to a range of factors. The site exhibits poor sourcing in many of its news stories, linking largely to other Fox News content. Likewise, many authors for Fox News exhibit low overall expertise, either because they do not routinely write on the same topics or because their past publications have been low scoring.
Like any news source, scores for articles from Fox News varied widely based on factors like writing tone and cited evidence. For example, some scored above 70%, while others scored below 50%.
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How Opinionated Is Fox News?
One of the metrics The Factual uses is the Writing Tone, which measures how opinionated the writing is in an article. For this metric, the algorithm looks for signs of subjective commentary (e.g., first person pronouns and unnecessary adverbs), as well as the emotional nature of selected words, and sees how prevalent they are for a given length of text. More neutral text receives higher ratings, with “0” being the most opinionated and “1” being the most neutral.
Fox News had an average Writing Tone score of 0.67, placing it in the 55th percentile in our dataset on this metric. This suggests that articles from Fox News exhibit only a moderate amount of opinionated language. This spread can be demonstrated by comparing highly biased headlines, such as “John Kerry’s climate office rife with ties to far-Left green groups,” with less biased ones, such as “Alaska wildfire season sets record.”
How Biased Is Fox News?
The Factual classifies news sites by political bias as either Left, Moderate Left, Center, Moderate Right, or Right. This classification comes from third-party assessments from media bias organizations such as AllSides and Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC). Based on this data, The Factual assigns Fox News a Right bias.
AllSides assigns Fox News a “Right” bias, based on survey data, editorial review, and over 89,205 ratings from the community. However, Fox News recently shifted from “Lean Right” to “Right” as of May 2021. It was also categorized as “Right” before December 2017. This “Right” classification is based on an editorial review following a perceived uptick in bias after President Biden's election. The bipartisan reviewing team noted “sensationalist headlines” and “right-wing” story choice, though they also credited “neutral” coverage of January 6.
Meanwhile, Media Bias/Fact Check gives Fox News a strong “Right” bias rating, suggesting they are “moderate to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation” and “utilize strong loaded words, publish misleading reports, and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes.” They also assign a “Mixed” score for factual reporting due to “poor sourcing” and the sharing of conspiracy theories.
Elsewhere, a study from Pew Research notes that Fox falls well to the right on the political spectrum based on the perception of U.S. adults, but also that it is not as right leaning as other sources, such as the Daily Caller and Breitbart.
Through its online and television coverage, Fox News has also faced recent criticism on a number of fronts related to its bias, including downplaying the severity of the Covid-19 crisis, furthering false claims of election fraud, falsely claiming that the Biden administration was continuing to build the border wall against campaign promises, and falsely claiming that Biden’s climate plans would force U.S. consumers to eat less meat.
Who Owns Fox News?
Fox News is owned by the Fox Corporation, which in turn is controlled by the Murdoch family. Businessman and media tycoon Rupert Murdoch serves as chairman, and his son, Lachlan, serves as CEO and executive chairman. The Murdoch family, through various entities, also owns the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, UK-based tabloids The Sun and The Times, and several Australian newspapers. Many of these entities have a conservative bias, and Murdoch family wields considerable influence over their operations.
Like other major media networks, Fox News generates substantial resources from ad revenues. In 2020, Variety reported that Fox News anticipated earning $1.32 billion in ad revenue. By comparison, CNN earned $773.1 million and MSNBC earned $723.1 million.
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How to Mitigate Bias
News articles tend to have bias because all authors have some frame of reference within which they describe a story. Political bias ratings are helpful in understanding this framing. However, it can be more beneficial to know how factual an article is based on quantifiable metrics that can be seen across the media ecosystem, such as cited evidence, author expertise, and writing tone. This is what The Factual ascertains.
Reading several, highly rated articles from across the political spectrum helps counter the bias of any news source or story. To have the day’s most factual news stories delivered to your inbox every morning, subscribe to our daily newsletter.
This article was updated on September 20, 2022 to reflect new data.