Note: This article uses “The Dallas News” and “The Dallas Morning News” interchangeably, as the DallasNews holding company owns and issues The Dallas Morning News newspaper.
Founded in 1885, the Dallas Morning News is a remarkably historied company. The newspaper itself is the most popular daily newspaper in Texas, with about 7 million visitors per month, and it claims to be the oldest continually operating business in the state. With nine Pulitzer Prizes and various other journalistic awards, the newspaper is at minimum regionally renowned – but it is also just that: regional. With its popularity highly concentrated in and around Dallas, it does reflect some partisan biases common to the area.
In this article, we will analyze the newspaper’s coverage and editorial decisions to determine if there is a discernible political bias in their reporting – and if so, what that bias may be. Through our analysis, we hope to provide a comprehensive answer to whether The Dallas Morning News is biased, as well as discuss the factors that contribute to media bias in general.
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, bias 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.
Source: Pew Research
Is the Dallas News Politically Biased?
Biasly’s rating for the Dallas News gives the paper an overall Bias Score of Somewhat Conservative, as generated by its AI-based algorithms. Biasly’s AI bias analysis focuses on the tone, opinion, and diction of the author, as well as their respective tendencies across articles. For example, Biasly’s AI rated the paper’s stances on immigration, civil rights, and Black Lives Matter all either somewhat conservative or medium conservative, while issues such as affirmative action, abortion policy, and clean energy were all rated as being near the center of the political spectrum. It also found that almost all the politicians the paper covered were portrayed negatively – a bipartisan pattern including scathing critiques of Republican and Democratic politicians alike.
Biasly has yet to assign an Analyst Bias Score. Typically, alongside the Computer Bias Score, Biasly presents an Analyst Bias Score. This score is curated based on a review of at least 15 articles by a team of analysts representing liberal, moderate, and conservative viewpoints. Different types of bias in articles, preferences for liberal or conservative politicians and policies, all factor into generating these scores. The more articles the Biasly analyst team reviews and rates, the more precise the analyst score becomes. Based on the AI bias rating, it can be reasonably anticipated to be somewhat conservative.
The Dallas Morning News themselves has spoken on its perceived bias, issuing essentially a statement of faith in its ability to represent both sides – though importantly, not claiming to be entirely centrist or bipartisan. Stephen Buckley, staff writer for Dallas News, has this to say on the paper’s bias:
“Having read The News cover-to-cover every day for the past few months, I know that our reporters do get all sides of the story. They just don’t do it consistently, which isn’t good enough…
I do not think our reporters are consciously unfair. I do think that sometimes, when we interview sources with whom we might be sympathetic, we are not as quick to dig for other, opposing voices. We are selective about weaving in voices from all sides.
In particular, conservative voices are frequently missing. No doubt conservatives — including some politicians and activists — are at times to blame, as they don’t want to be quoted in The News.”
He goes on to talk about how when radical conservative readers don’t see their viewpoints, they become further estranged, which reinforces the issue of not containing said viewpoints. This is particularly odd, as the bias rating already shows at minimum a slight conservative tilt in all of their writings. This may be due to the political climate where the paper is disseminated. When the entire populace of an area leans right, a moderate conservative becomes perceived as centrist (or even sometimes slightly left-leaning, as seen in the above quote), and voices that would be considered deeply radical in other areas become acceptable mainstream views.
Whether you’re a daily reader of the Dallas News or a critic looking for reasons to oppose the paper, you have a bias as well. In the remainder of this article, we’ll talk about ways to identify this bias so you can separate the opinions from the facts and become a more informed consumer of news.
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 Bias in Dallas News Online Articles
Statista has noted that of the paper’s readers in the U.S. (meaning the vast majority of its readers), it has a “relatively high share of male readers”, a larger share of high income readers than other papers, and is much more popular amongst Millenials and in megacities (namely Dallas) than their competitors. Given the status of their readership base, is the Dallas News really biased? We’ll look at some of their articles in more detail below to identify the signs.
Source: Pew Research
When determining bias, some of the most common metrics used include Author, Diction, Expediency Bias, Tendency, and Tone, which are the primary metrics we’ll focus on below.
- Author: A metric related to the article’s author, taking into account their history of stance on issues based on past articles and social media posts.
- Diction: The specific words chosen by the writer.
- Expediency Bias relates to the immediate impression created by elements like the article’s headline, images, or summary, indicating if they favor a particular viewpoint.
- Tendency measures how consistently an author shows bias in their work, including factors like their tone and perspective.
- Tone: This represents the attitude of the writing, formed distinctively but related to the author’s word choices or diction.
Source: The Dallas Morning News
Let’s use this headline as an example. The immediate note of the commission’s misnomer already doesn’t ring as particularly nonpartisan, and the almost flippant question of “So what does it do?” makes it clear this article likely won’t be favorable towards the Texas Railroad Commission. The expediency bias – an immediate indicator from the headline alone, in this case – is very clear.
Further examinations of other articles, like this one titled “Should Dallas build its own jail? One county commissioner says yes” lean “Somewhat Liberal” by Biasly’s calculation. This article seems to lean liberal based more on the topic than on the opinion of the article’s author. Prison reform as a subject is a traditionally progressive idea, and while this article isn’t directly advocating for any hugely Democratic measure, they are discussing a proposed measure to avoid overcrowding prisons.
The nonpartisan nature of this article is also evident in the inclusion of quotes from both proponents and opponents of constructing a new jail. This excerpt shows the use of differing quotes presented back-to-back:
“Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said Wednesday that Dallas has no plans to build its own jail to hold every person arrested by the police department. The latest county jail deal reflects terms negotiated and agreed to by city and county officials, she said.
“This is a contract that we’ve been working on and what we believe is in our best interest going forward,” Tolbert said.
…
“If we can get ahead of it and have a conversation about what the contribution is versus what’s received, that might point us to a direction on whether Dallas does need to invest in our own jail,” said council member Gay Donnell Willis.”
This alternating between multiple parties’ views – as well as the interspersion of background facts – keeps the tone comfortably neutral. Because there is not a persistent bias throughout the article besides the discussion of the topic at all, the tendency also remains neutral – perhaps slightly left of center.
The author of this article, Everton Bailey Jr., is a staff writer for the Dallas News, primarily covering local government. He previously worked for the Associated Press. Another article of his – “Appeals Court denies AG Ken Paxton’s latest attempt to block State Fair of Texas’ gun ban” – confirms this to be a pattern, with a score of Center – biased towards neither party. While this article has far fewer direct quotes, it still follows the same neutral structure of discussing both sides’ viewpoints, as seen in the excerpt below:
“[Dallas County District Court Judge Emily] Tobolowsky last Thursday denied Paxton’s request for a temporary injunction spurred by a lawsuit against the fair, the city of Dallas and its interim city manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert. The attorney general then filed an emergency appeal with the Austin-based appeals court.
The new fair policy was announced in August and comes after a man shot three people at last year’s event. The fair previously allowed any attendee with a valid handgun license to bring a gun as long as it was concealed, but state law doesn’t require Texans to have a permit to carry a firearm in a public place.
…
Fair officials and attorneys have said the new policy is meant to increase fairgoers’ safety and that the law Paxton cited doesn’t apply to private groups that temporarily use the space.”
This consistent back-and-forth structure provides a comprehensive overview of the topic without advocating for either side.
Although that author is generally nonpartisan, bias can differ between articles and authors, even when they come from the same organization. This shows the importance of looking for the signs of bias — including (but not limited to) tone, tendency, diction, author, and expediency bias — in any article you come across.
Not all Dallas News articles are liberal or nonpartisan like the two examined above. Some articles, like this one – “A survival guide for a moderate conservative” – fit the Dallas News’ traditional pattern of being written by conservative authors for a conservative audience. The expediency bias in the title and the author’s candid admission of partisanship in the first paragraphs of the article make their bias clear. The author proudly declares:
“I’m a Bush-era compassionate conservative who believes in fiscal restraint and social tolerance. I favor policies leading to less government dependency, economic freedom supported by market capitalism, fair trade, and global engagement. That apparently makes me a “political exile” at this point in our history.”
It’s important to remember, though, that most news sources will not begin with a convenient description of the author’s personal biases and a declaration of who the audience is for any given piece. This brings us to a common but important distinction we’ll discuss next.
Dallas News Opinion Articles
Before we answer this question of whether the entire source is biased, we need to draw a distinction between providing opinions and reporting facts. While reporting is intended to be neutral, giving the reader the facts and quotes from primary sources to let them form their own opinion, opinions are an outlet for columnists to express their personal views on the issues of the day. While we saw elements of factual reporting in the articles above, especially in the two articles we examined by Everton Bailey Jr., opinion pieces such as the conservative “survival guide” by Ken Hersh don’t seek objectivity but instead put forth an opinion.
Consider the opinion article “American institutions can solve America’s problems” The title is loaded with bias, specifically looking at its diction. The language is evocative of patriotism and a disdain for other countries, specifically connoting the conservative touchstone of “America first”. The repetition of “America” reinforces rhetoric that accompanies isolationist geopolitical strategies and laissez-faire economic policies intended to promote domestic growth. The presence of all this in the title alone already suggests that the author does not intend to provide a fair and objective reporting of the facts.
If we return to the article “Appeals Court denies AG Ken Paxton’s latest attempt to block State Fair of Texas’ gun ban”, as discussed previously, we can see it has a much more objective title, focusing on informing the reader rather than pushing an agenda. Reliable articles are marked by neutral language and facts from credible sources. Based on the title alone, it could be safely assumed that this article would be less biased than the one prior.
These articles, in addition to the several discussed above, are only a small sample of all of the content Dallas News offers, but they indicate that the outlet is sometimes characterized by a great deal of opinion — further underscoring the importance of knowing how to distinguish subjective writing from genuine reporting.
Who Owns the Dallas News?
The Dallas Morning News is owned by DallasNews Corporation, which is traded publicly and therefore owned by its shareholders. The major shareholders are Blackrock and Vanguard, similar to most major companies, and there’s no discernible individual who would hold a disproportionate sway over editorial decisions made by the news subsidiary. That being said, the current chairman of the board is John Beckert, who’s been involved with the company for over 20 years, and the CEO is Grant S. Moise, who manages the core assets of the Dallas Morning News. While neither of the individual’s political affiliations are stated outright, if anyone were to exert influence over the paper, it would be them. Given the slightly conservative slant of most Dallas News content, it can reasonably be assumed that they favor Republican ideology and causes.
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 called “confirmation bias.” It is important to challenge your beliefs and get third-party verification that you are hearing the full story. This is why we recommend using Biasly to compare different news stories side-by-side – our bias ratings can help you figure out what both sides think of a political issue.
Even though Biasly gave the Dallas News a Somewhat Conservative bias score, remember that bias varies by article, and the Dallas News does not exclusively publish conservative thought pieces. In fact, we examined a few today that are neutral and even borderline left-leaning. Additionally, some article types will inherently have more or less bias; general news articles are known for being less biased than opinion pieces. And while every article you read will be biased to some degree, some stick to the facts better than others, which is why it’s so important to use Biasly’s News Check to help you determine the bias of what you read.