The New York Post was founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton and is a daily news outlet based in New York, New York. As America’s oldest continuously-published news, the NY Post has a national digital presence, including flagship sites, nypost.com and pagesix.com. Owned by a unit of News Corp, the company operates across the United States, Australia, and the UK– its content is distributed and consumed worldwide. The NY Post ranks 14th among news and media sources with an average of 127 million monthly visits.
How Does Biasly Rate News Sources?
Biasly’s algorithms produce bias ratings to help provide multiple perspectives on given articles. Biasly has analyzed 200,000+ news articles from more than 3,200 news sources through our A.I. technology and team of political analysts to find the most factual, unbiased news stories.
Biasly determines the degree of political bias in news sources by using Biasly’s Bias Meter Rating, in which Biasly’s team analyzes media sources’ reliability and bias and produces three scores, a Reliability Score that measures the accuracy of media sources; an A.I. Bias Score, evaluated by A.I.; and an Analyst Bias Score evaluated by political analysts. These scores are rated based on seven rating metrics including Tone, Tendency, Diction, Author Check, Selection/Omission, Expediency Bias, and Accuracy. These metrics help our analysts to determine the political attitude of the article.
Our A.I. machine-learning system employs natural language processing and entity-specific sentiment analysis to examine individual articles and determine their bias levels. By analyzing the key terms in an article such as policies, biased phrases, political terminologies, politicians, and their nicknames, the algorithms can rate the attitude of the text. Bias scores range from -100% and 100%, with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral.
Many Americans have most likely heard about NY Post, SimilarWeb ranks NY Post as category #6 rank in U.S. News & Media Publishers. They also rank #81 in the entire United States, as well as a top 300 global news source.
While NY Post also operates the celebrity gossip site Page Six, the biased ratings and analyses focus solely and not on any other flagship sites.
Is NY Post Politically Biased?
The NY Post is a conservative tabloid newspaper and is considered to align with conservative, traditional, or right-wing beliefs. Moreover, despite being the oldest continuously published news source, just how much political bias does the NY Post have? Biasly’s A.I. media bias rating shows what policies New York Post supports and opposes- with higher percentages indicating a conservative viewpoint. The New York Post scored an A.I. Bias Score of “Extremely Conservative” and a Policy Learning score of “Very Conservative”.
Analyst Ratings evaluate politicians’ social media, voting records, and statements made in the press to determine leanings– they use this to determine a Bias score and a Bias within Authors. Similarly, the Analyst Bias and Author Bias scores are “Somewhat Conservative.” Thus, coverage is typically done from an American conservative and political perspective.
Third-party bias research sources such as Allsides and Media Bias/Fact Check agree that NY Post leans right. Media Bias/Fact Check indicated NY Post has a right bias, meaning that the source is very conservative in its bias and articles often use words that favor conservative causes.
Before we begin, we need to discuss bias. Bias is a natural function of humans, and we can express it both consciously and unconsciously. Bias is one of the most fundamental forms of pattern recognition in humans. This isn’t to lower the bar and say that “all things are biased,” but to explain the process in which we may come to trust certain news organizations that display patterns of coverage.
On the media’s part, there is an incentive to retain audiences, encourage them to purchase subscriptions, and rate products positively. Bias is a two-way street, people want to see news stories about things they care about, and the media needs viewers to continue their operations. This creates a positive feedback loop that influences what stories are covered and from what perspective. This also explains the actions of more liberal news organizations.
Analysis of NY Post Articles
Airship reports “One of America’s most provocative brands, the New York Post is known for its bold headlines and eye-catching front pages.” With over 80 million unique monthly visitors to its websites, the NY Post is a hotspot for 62% men and the remaining 37% females, with the largest group of visitors being 25-34-year-olds.
In examining an online article, we can use Biasly’s analyst ratings to determine whether or not there is bias– this article is titled “Ron Klain says mammoth ‘infrastructure’ bill should be bipartisan.”
Biasly’s breakdown of this article’s bias shows similarities to the previous analysis of the NY Post as a whole. Biasly ranks this specific article at “Mediym Conservative.” Further, the policy leaning comes in at “Medium Conservative,” which again shifts in favor of right-wing support and the politician portrayal percentage in the article marks a negative sentiment of 100%.
Leaning into the analyst ratings, metrics such as tone, author, diction, and expediency bias can be looked at. For example, the author has a slight but clear favoring of the Republican position, calling the price tag “exorbitant”:
“White House chief of staff Ron Klain is insisting that President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure package should be able to attract bipartisan support– despite its broad definition of “infrastructure” and exorbitant price tag to match.”
This tone is consistent with the rest of the article, which has a tendency in its stance regarding President Biden’s infrastructure plan; indicating throughout the article that the bill is too expensive and not good enough.
Regarding the diction, the article uses mostly neutral terms, with some extreme terms, like the example listed above, that explain their most important arguments.
Next, expediency bias is the first impression and emotions we feel upon seeing a headline, an image, or an article summary– this expediency bias is often seen as clickbait. The headline refers to Biden’s infrastructure bill as “mammoth” indicating that it is hefty and therefore is appealing to anyone who also agrees that the $2 trillion bill is quite large. Moreover, using a creative and perhaps overdramatic word in the headline catches readers’ eyes, especially if they agree or strongly disagree with the author’s position.
The accompanying image below the article’s title is a picture of House chief of staff Ron Klain. In stating also both in the title and caption of the image that Biden’s infrastructure plan should get bipartisan support, perhaps this is attractive to any readers who find themselves stuck in the middle of the political debates and want to see more collaboration between the parties to achieve a common goal.
Lastly, the author Mark Moore possesses a writing style where he is consistent in his stance and believes that the bill is too expensive. Moreover, Moore himself has a mild conservative lean, as he often reports on more conservative issues. Recall that Moore calls the infrastructure’s price tag to be “exorbitant” and has negative sentiments towards Biden’s agenda.
Additionally, this article specifically has a conservative policy leaning analysis and a 100% negative politician portrayal analysis, meaning Moore has negative sentiments towards the Biden administration in the article and in his other pieces. Another one of his articles headlines at “Poll finds more than two-thirds of US pessimistic about the economy.”
In turn, while several factors contribute to whether or not an article has bias, it is critical to be aware and knowledgeable about these factors. Taking a look into the tone, diction, author, and expediency bias helps to identify what sort of bias is present.
Analysis of NY Post Opinion Articles
Contrary to regular news or reporting pieces, opinions allow an author to express his or her own beliefs and express personal beliefs on day-to-day conflicts. Rather than using facts and quotes from primary sources, columnists will use dramatic headlines to garner attention from readers- just like this opinion piece from Miranda Devine titled “Biden’s disastrous Air Force Academy fall only makes US look weak to our global enemies.”
The title initially establishes the author’s personal bias, with language suggestive of negative opinions toward Biden. Calling Biden’s fall “disastrous” and “makes the US look weak to our global enemies” attempts to influence readers before they even begin reading the article. Strong words of opinion with negative sentiment continue throughout the article, “shocking,” “sad,” and “vulnerable” to state just a few.
Contrastingly, another opinion piece from the NY Post focuses less on discouraging the opposition and more on conveying information. “The Clean Slate Act poised to pass would just create more advantages for criminals.” Here, there is no immediate language that would make a reader think one way about a specific politician, political party or any other aspect of politics. Rather, the article uses neutral language and looks to deter crime from the streets- something that is favorable to every person no matter their political or social identity.
Just based on the title alone, it is clear that the second article contains less bias than the first. In turn, while these two opinion articles are only a small glimpse at the NY Post’s opinion section, it is critical to understand the differences between subjective and objective writing pieces and how they impact our personal opinions and beliefs.
Who owns the NY Post?
Billionaire Rupert Murdoch is a media mogul that owns NY Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and many other media outlets in the television, radio, and newspaper industries. With an estimated network of nearly $8 billion, Murdoch himself is a far-right partisan who is criticized for pulling American political debate to the right with his media empire.
A former News Corp. executive states Murdoch “hungered for the kind of influence in the United States that had in England and Australia” therefore “part of our political strategy was the New York Post and the creation of Fox News and the Weekly Standard.”
According to a survey by Pace University in 2004, NY Post has been rated as the least credible major news outlet in New York. Ultimately, it can be argued that the NY Post is designed to appeal to a conservative audience and in a tabloid format with high usage of satire articles mixed in as well. The source is recognized for writing articles on more promiscuous topics and headlines. For example, Note also that the NY Post also runs Page Six which is a hot spot for pop culture celebrities including the royal family, and includes a section on the web page’s article titled “Gossip.”
Rupert Murdoch, Source: Wikipedia
How to Evaluate and Uncover Bias
It can often be difficult to tell if the news you watch is biased. If you have settled on a news channel, it’s usually because you trust the information you are gaining. Unfortunately, many trust the information they are hearing because it confirms what they already believe. This is referred to as “confirmation bias.” It is important to challenge your beliefs and get third-party verification that what you are hearing is the full story. This is why we recommend using Biasly to compare different news stories side-by-side using our bias ratings to figure out what both sides think of a political issue.
While Biasly gives the NY Post a biased score of “Extremely Conservative” keep in mind that this percentage can be altered between different authors, topics, etc. who each possess their levels of bias. Given that the NY Post also covers a wide range of topics, more factual articles would typically have less bias than opinion-based pieces.