Classification of Americans’ “News Diet” for Gallup Research
Gallup recognizes that no classification of Americans’ news consumption is perfect. Reasonable people could
disagree on what constitutes a liberal, moderate or conservative news source and to what bucket each specificnews source should be assigned. To ensure the results derived from news diet are not the artifact of subjective
decisions by the analyst, Gallup adopted the following procedure.
1. Each respondent in a recent series of Knight Foundation/Gallup surveys answered the following openended question: “Please name the top 2-3 news sources you use. Be as specific as possible.”a. A coder then assigned these open-ended responses to specific news outlets.
b. Another coder reviewed the initial coding to ensure correct assignment of each source.
2. Two independent coding schemes -- MBFC (Media Bias/Fact Check) and AS (Allsides) -- were used toassign each source as liberal, moderate or conservative.
a. MBFC and AS code the ideological leaning of news outlets in the following manner:i.
MBFC -- Left; Left-Center; Least Biased; Right-Center; Right.
ii.
AS -- Left; Lean left; Center; Lean right; Rightiii.
These codes were then assigned numeric values:
1. Left
2. Left-Center, Lean left
3. Least Biased, Center
4. Right-Center, Lean right
5. Right
a. For some sources, AS distinguishes between news and opinion and assigns one source two scores.
For instance, The New York Times (NYT) receives a score of 2 (lean left) for news articles and ascore 1 (left) for opinion articles. When this occurs, the average score is calculated so that the NYT
gets a score of 1.5 from AS.
b. MBFC and AS often assign sources the same value, but sometimes there are small discrepancies
between MBFC and AS. For such cases, the average score is calculated. For instance, MBFC assigns
the NYT a score of 2 (Left-Center). As discussed above, the AS score for NYT is 1.5. Therefore, thefinal score for NYT is 1.75.
c. For some less-frequently used sources, only AS or MBFC assigns a rating. In such cases, that single
rating is the final score. For instance, MBFC assigns Conservative Tree House an ideological lean of“Right,” whereas AS does not rate the source. So, Conservative Tree House receives a score of 5.
d. What did not receive a score?
i.
Local TV stations and small local newspapers.
ii.
General sources (TV, newspaper, internet, Google, etc.)
3. After each news source had a score, that source was assigned as liberal, moderate or conservative. See
Table 1 below.
a. Liberal = 1.00 to 2.49
b. Moderate = 2.50 to 3.50
c. Conservative = 3.51 to 5.00
4. A respondent was then categorized into a news diet.
a. “Conservative news diet” describes those who cite only conservative news sources (e.g., Fox News,Breitbart, One America News, the National Review) as top sources.
b. “Liberal news diet” is assigned to those naming only liberal news sources (e.g., CNN, MSNBC, TheNew York Times, Vox) as top sources.
c. “Mixed news diet” includes those who name multiple sources that cut across partisan lines orinclude neutral sources (e.g., Associated Press, USA Today, The Economist)
d. “Undesignated” refers to those who provide only generic categories (e.g., internet, TV, newspaper)or who did not answer the open-ended question.
Copyright © 2020 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Classification of Americans’ “News Diet” for Gallup Research

Table 1: Chart of the Most Commonly Named Sources, by Ideology Classification
Ideology

Score

1Liberal

1.25
1.5
1.75
2

Crooked Media
Democracy Now

News source
Daily Beast
Huffington Post

The New YorkerSlate

The Intercept
CNN
Buzzfeed
The New York Times
ABCLos Angeles Times

The Young TurksTime Magazine
2.25
2.5
Moderate

Conservative

3

NPR
Axios
Business Insider
PBS
AP
Financial Times

3.5

Chicago Tribune

3.75
44.5
4.75

Wall Street Journal
American Family Radio
Drudge ReportFox
ACLJ
Daily Signal
Epoch Times
The Blaze

5Mother Jones
The Week
Al Jazeera
The AtlanticThe Washington
Post

Daily Kos
MSNBC
Talking Points
MemoVox
Vice News
CBSThe Guardian

BBCCNBC
Politico
Ars Technica
NBCReal ClearPolitics

Bloomberg
The Economist
USA Today
C-SPAN
Reuters

Reason Magazine
New York Post
Newsmax
Daily Caller
Daily WireEWTN
The Federalist

Washington Times
One America NewsThe Hill

Daily Mail
EIB Network
National Review

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