Is SFGate Liberal? 

Before SFGate’s sale to Hearst Communications in 2000, its role as the West Coast’s newsroom aggregator represented a legacy of century-old news dynasties. In pop culture, San Francisco represents the spirit of Silicon Valley and is celebrated as the home of progressive politics, so much so that conservative commentators coined the term “San Francisco values.” So, how biased and factual is SFGate?

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 SFGate?

SFGate scored an average Factual Grade of 63.2%, placing it in the 48th percentile of our dataset. These moderate scores are driven by several factors. The site employs dedicated authors to cover specific news beats, leading to high scores for author expertise. However, at the same time, they frequently do not cite any external news articles or link only to other SFGate articles, leading to low overall scores for source quality. Additionally, stories from SFGate have a moderately opinionated tone (see below).

Like any news source, scores for articles from SFGate varied widely. For example, some scored above 90%, while others scored 50% or below.

How Opinionated Is SFGate? 

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.

SFGate had an average score of 0.65, placing it in the 61st percentile in our dataset. This suggests that articles from the site are moderately opinionated on average. This can be seen through article titles such as “Joe Biden is a lousy president” and “Facebook and Google’s ad addiction can’t last forever.”

What Is SFGate’s Political Bias?  

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 All Sides and Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC). Based on this data, The Factual assigns SFGate a Moderate Left bias.

MBFC assigns SFGate a “Left-Center” bias because its story selection typically favors left-leaning causes. While MBFC notes the site’s “straight news” approach, SFGate often publishes stories with emotionally loaded language like “San Francisco is forever dying.” MBFC gives SFGate a high grade for factual reporting and a clean fact-check record, with no failed checks in the past five years.

AllSides assigns a “Lean-Left” bias based on independent research and 1,227 community ratings. However, it does not attribute a confidence level to this rating. AllSides notes the paper foregoes national and international news coverage and instead focuses on local and regional news. 

Who Owns SFGate? 

SFGate is owned by Hearst LLC, a global information and media company that owns a vast array of TV stations, popular shows, networks, and magazines. Some examples include A&E, History, Lifetime, and ESPN, as well as magazines like Men’s Health and Cosmopolitan. The descendants of William Randolph Hearst — one of America’s biggest media moguls of the early 20th century — now serve on the board of trustees that oversees Hearst Communications and SFGate. The company claims it reaches 19% of U.S viewers through its collection of brands. Most of its funding is derived from advertisements and sponsored content. 

According to Open Secrets, Hearst donated 70% of its political contributions to Republican candidates and causes in 2020. This includes $230,105 in direct contributions to political campaigns and $427,500 to lobbying. In 2019, the editorial staff of Hearst began efforts to unionize with the Writer’s Guild of America, East. Hearst obstructed these efforts in a campaign utilizing unusual tactics, according to the NLRB, which ruled in favor of the staff. 

Why Does It Matter? 

News articles are bound 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, from cited evidence, to author expertise, to the 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.

Article updated on September 22, 2022 to reflect new data.