The Financial Times according to Similar Web has a monthly viewership base of over 32 million people, which makes them the top finance news outlet in the United Kingdom, their country of origin. Considering such a massive amount of people receive their financial news from them it is important to determine if what the publication releases is reliable.
Source: Pew Research
Pew Research has found that a majority of Americans do not have great trust in their chosen news source, this is a troubling statistic since it displays just how concerned many people on both political sides are concerning reliability in the media landscape.
According to Biasly, the Financial Times has an Overall Reliability Rating of Good, we will investigate this further, and also any additional accuracy and reliability issues related to this website further along in this article. We also seek to provide as much insight as possible into how to investigate, generally, whether a certain media source is reliable.
Does Reliability Matter?
Reliability refers to how trustworthy or accurate information, or in this case, a news source is. If we consider this definition, it quickly becomes clear why reliability is important in media sources. If we can’t trust the things we read then there isn’t much of a point in continuing to consume content from that source, after all. So how exactly can we gauge the reliability of a news source anyways?
There are several potential measures of reliability to look out for when trying to determine whether a media source is reliable or not. Red flags for an unreliable article can include the presence of wild unsubstantiated claims, facts dependent on other unreliable sources, heavy use of opinionated language, and more. Some indicators of a reliable news source, on the other hand, include things like:
- Absence of subjective/opinionated language in articles
- Credible sources cited (e.g., neutral sources, .gov, .edu websites)
- Facts and statistics backed by multiple relevant outside sources
- Use of primary sources when possible (e.g., interviews, quotes)
- Information that remains consistent across news sources
So How Does the Financial Times Fare in its Reliability?
The political reliability index developed by Biasly objectively assesses news organizations’ accuracy and trustworthiness. The Financial Times’s overall Reliability Score has been rated as ‘Good’ by Biasly. This rating is a weighted average of two distinct scores: the Fact Analysis Score and the Source Analysis Score, each evaluating separate components of Financial Times’s Reliability. When computing the Average Reliability of the article the Fact Analysis score is more heavily weighted. These ratings are as follows in the next two paragraphs:
The Financial Times’s Fact Analysis Score is ‘Good,’ which suggests readers can trust most of Financial Times’s content online. The Fact Analysis score focuses more on the accuracy of claims, facts, and sources presented in the article and any hints of selection and omission bias, which we will discuss further in the article.
The Financial Times’s Source Analysis Score is ‘Fair,’ which suggests readers can trust some of the sources, links, and quotes provided by the news source. This score, which is based on A.I., focuses on assessing the quality of sources and quotes used including their number, lengths, uniqueness, and diversity.
It must be underscored that these scores are based upon an aggregate of articles released over a range of time, there are individual articles that this score would not represent. A multitude of factors could lead to an individual article being more or less reliable, including elements such as the author, the context of the article, the nature of the content, and others. We will analyze individual articles later to understand some of these components and what led to the Financial Times’s Overall Reliability Rating of Good.
Financial Times Accuracy and Reliability
The perception of reliability is extremely important for media sources to maintain, readers will continue to come back to the outlet if they believe what they publish is consistently factual. We will investigate whether the Financial Times’s articles are consistent in this nature, to do this we will check if they corroborate what they assert with proper evidence.
To give an example of this variance in reliability within a single outlet we can look at AP News, which has been given an Overall Reliability Score of Good. The article “Justice Department Suing Georgia Over State’s New Voting Law” was given a Reliability Rating of Good. However, “Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp Meets South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol During Overseas Trip” was given a Reliability Rating of Fair. Even with the source having an Overall Rating of Good for Reliability, individual articles, due to a variety of factors, can have differing levels of consistency.
First, we will look into selection and omission bias to see if they are using a variety of sourcing within their articles.
Selection bias is when stories and facts are selected or deselected, often on ideological grounds, to create a narrative in support of the new sources’ ideology. Omission bias, on the other hand, is when different opinions and political views regarding a situation are left out so that the reader is only exposed to the ideological perspective supported by the author. It’s important to keep in mind these two types of biases when trying to assess an article’s level of accuracy.
The article “Democrats Race to Salvage $1.75tn Build Back Better Bill” displays an example of this in the Financial Times:
“[Pramila Jayapal] slammed the senator [Joe Manchin] on Monday, saying that while she had taken a call from Manchin this week, she believed the senator had betrayed fellow lawmakers’ trust by going ‘back on his word’”.
Though there is nothing specifically wrong with this statement, the issue is that the author employed no opposing conservative-leaning standpoint throughout the article apart from providing a couple from Manchin himself. These selections and omissions lead to the vilification of the Republican senator unnecessarily, as the lack of context prevents the reader from forming an opinion on the situation while understanding the full context.
“Manchin, who has opposed specific components of the Build Back Better bill — including the introduction of paid family and medical leave for all American workers — has also taken issue with the sheer size of the spending bill, claiming that more fiscal restraint is needed at a time of rising inflation.”
This, again, is an example of the author only using Senator Manchin as a source for the opposite viewpoint. Additionally, the author’s use of the word “claiming” to some readers may imply that the senator’s statement is inaccurate without proper evidence. The author could have used a word such as “stating” which does not carry the same effect of inserting doubt into the ensuing statement.
Analysis of Reliability In the Financial Times Opinion Pieces
Engaging in opinion articles can be a useful way to gain a perspective on different situations, it allows the reader to hear an argument from the author even if the reader does not agree with that belief. It is important to distinguish, though, that opinion pieces are not objective, when the author argues a certain side they will in many cases favor certain sources that corroborate it.
Quality of Sources and Facts Used
With an Overall Reliability Rating of Good according to Biasly, the Financial Times generally can be perceived as accurate. However, in certain individual cases, this rating may not apply, especially when it comes to opinion pieces where objectivity is likely to be absent.
One example of this is the article “Business Appears Complacent About US Democratic Stability”, where the author used eleven quotes within his article. Under normal circumstances this would be sufficient, however, he used six short quotes, four medium quotes, and only one long quote. Generally longer quotes are better because they allow for less misuse by an author, a shorter quote is easier to take out of context and use for a purpose not intended.
This article employed 7 sources throughout:
- Financial Times (Center)
- “The Election Sabotage Scheme and How Congress Can Stop It” The Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law (Liberal-leaning)
- Statement in Support of the Freedom to Vote Act signed by professors country (Liberal-leaning)
- “European think-tank” (Dead link / No source)
- Washington Post (Somewhat Liberal)
- Business for Voting Rights (Liberal-leaning)
- Harvard Business Review (Center)
While the number of sources used to cite the information in this article is acceptable, there needs to be more sources from opposing positions, as the story offers no context for the reader toward arguments on the other side of the issue.
In fairness to the author, he properly cites the information he provides in this article, and it does not seem as though he takes the information from his references out of context. Nevertheless, the author does not use a single resource containing an opposing viewpoint making it very hard for the reader to obtain a balanced viewpoint regarding the topic.
Analyzing the article from the previous section “Democrats Race to Salvage $1.75tn Build Back Better Bill”, it runs into the same pitfalls as the latter, although to a lesser extent. This is because they use statements from multiple Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Pramila Jayapal, and then White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, while only using information provided by Joe Manchin on the other side of the issue. This imbalance may mislead the reader into thinking that there is a larger amount of support in the situation against Manchin than in reality. Using these sources with such a disparity towards democrats leads to an overall liberal leaning within the article since conservative opinions are subdued, and liberal opinions are emphasized.
Although there is an imbalance in political leaning for the sources used throughout the article, the quality of facts presented within this article is satisfactory. The author properly portrays the opinions of the sources he presents throughout, directly taking quotes from press conferences. The information they present regarding the history of the bill in question was also correct and properly sourced.
Selection and Omission Bias
One example of Selection and Omission Bias can be seen in the article “Trump’s Vaccine Heresy Shows Populism is Not a Monolith” where the author describes how Donald Trump’s stance towards the COVID-19 vaccine has resulted in a political divide, even within his party. The issue in this article lies in how the situation is described, as the author only references parties and resources who had been critical of the former president in this instance. In describing this shift in the effectiveness of populism the author only references situations where he deemed Trump was incorrect:
“On such high-stakes foreign policy questions as North Korea, he alternated between nuclear threats and unconditional abasement to a dictator half his age. Again, his supporters went along with him”
“Trump failed to build a wall against Mexico, to no great heartbreak on his own side”
The author gives no opposing angle to this argument, leading the reader to assume that this is the only correct option with no other context. The title can be seen as an example of this bias as well with the word “heresy” implying that the former president holds a belief that the vast majority of people believe is not the case, however, the author provided no evidence to establish the truth of this to justify the use of the term.
In looking at the article analyzed in the previous section “Business Appears Complacent About US Democratic Stability” it can be seen that the author omits any conservative input on the situation. This decision made by the author reduces the overall reliability of the article as it does not provide the proper balance for the reader to understand the full context. We can see in this example where the author quotes one side:
“The fact that some companies have quietly resumed donations to Republican groups that push for restrictive voting bills implies complacency, says Bruce Freed, president of the Center for Political Accountability, which promotes disclosure on political spending. ‘I don’t think they’ve woken up to the enormity of the risks that they face’.”
In this passage, the author does not offer any additional context regarding the health of businesses beyond this. By omitting those contradictory opinions the reader may be misconstrued into thinking that negative consequences towards those businesses are inevitable when that may not be the case.
Opinion pieces are frequently biased since the author is attempting to make an argument for a certain side of an issue. It is helpful to understand where sourcing and bias issues in these articles can occur, as it can help one recognize the signs and act accordingly to seek further context.
So is Financial Times Reliable?
Financial Times is a mostly reliable news source, while there are specific instances where issues in reliability, especially in opinion articles, can be present, these problems are somewhat rare occurrences. Opinion pieces are a minority of articles published in the paper, overall, stories published are rated as Center in Bias and Good in Reliability. It is smart to be vigilant in seeking out bias, even on sites that are generally deemed to be reliable, as some individual articles may differ. One tool which may assist in this task is Biasly’s News Bias Checker which helps uncover any bias and reliability issues an article may contain.