According to Agility, the Toronto Star is Canada’s largest daily print newspaper, and it also dominates in readership as well. The Toronto Star has been able to gain a vast readership because of its dedication to credibility. Its public editor, Kathy English, came out with a statement in which she said the Toronto Star is committed to upholding the ethics of journalism. This is beneficial to the Toronto Star because Americans dislike inaccuracy in their news the most, as shown on the Pew Research Center’s chart.
Source: Pew Research Center
Although it has a reasonably positive reputation, there have been questions of its credibility in recent years. Is the Toronto Star as credible as it claims it is? At Biasly, we endeavor to evaluate the accuracy and dependability of all media outlets. Let us investigate the reliability and accuracy of the Toronto Star.
Does Reliability Matter?
Reliability, in general, 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
How Does the Toronto Star Fare in its Reliability?
The political reliability index developed by Biasly objectively assesses news organizations’ accuracy and trustworthiness. The Toronto Star’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 Buzzfeed’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 Toronto Star’s Fact Analysis Score is ‘Good,’ which suggests readers can trust most of Toronto Star’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 Toronto Star’s Source Analysis Score is ‘Poor,’ which suggests readers can’t really trust the quality and completeness of sources, links, and quotes provided by the news source. This score, which is based on AI, focuses on assessing the quality of sources and quotes used including their number, lengths, uniqueness, and diversity.
However, since these scores are based on percentages and averages, individual articles could be more or less trustworthy depending on the context, author, and other factors. Our findings show that the Toronto Star’s reliability is mostly but not all factual because they have retracted several stories in the past or had pieces that were not factual.
Let us analyze the supporting data for the Toronto Star’s rankings and discuss what to watch out for while searching for trustworthy news sources.
The Toronto Star Accuracy and Reliability
The credibility of news organizations is significantly impacted by bias and political orientation. Like numerous other media organizations, the Toronto Star has occasionally been accused of prioritizing the liberal agenda above facts. Although it is deemed a “progressive paper”, its new CEO has a more “traditional” agenda, and some are wondering if the paper is going to begin to prioritize the Republican agenda above facts.
We can evaluate the integrity of the Toronto Star’s news stories and deduce how well the publication supports assertions with evidence, and see whether this is indeed the case. We will check for selection and omission bias as we assess the articles’ correctness and factuality.
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.
Biasly assigns a percentage score to accuracy, with one being the least accurate and 100 being the most. Ratings are calculated by weighing assertions with supporting evidence, the number of reliable internal sources, and the number of reliable external sources employed. A full page at Biasly’s website includes dependability and accuracy ratings for newly released Toronto Star news stories. As we previously stated, according to the reports analytics have assessed, the Toronto Star has a ‘Good’ reliability score. This score can vary from article to article, though, and the most extreme variations in dependability are caused by bias, notably omission, and selection bias. Consider also, IFEX, which has a “Somewhat Conservative” Bias and a “Fair” analyst reliability score according to Biasly. For example, they had one article that had a “Poor” reliability score titled, “Twelve Common Misconceptions About Julian Assange,” and another article called, “World Press Freedom Day 2023: Australia Going Backwards on Press Freedom,” that had a “Fair” reliability score. As a result, stories displaying political leaning are less reliable than neutral ones.
For instance, this Toronto Star article titled, “Twitter Permanently Bans U.S. Congresswoman’s Personal Account for COVID Remarks” is rated as Center-Left. Concerning the selection and omission bias, the authors, Eric Stirgus and Tia Mitchell, do a good job of getting multiple quotes from Marjorie Taylor Greene. However, Stirgus and Mitchell fail to get more quotes from Twitter for their response to her statements. Stirgus and Mitchell’s source, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a U.S. Representative, says in her statement:
“‘Twitter is an enemy to America and can’t handle the truth,’ she said. ‘That’s fine, I’ll show America we don’t need them and it’s time to defeat our enemies. They can’t successfully complete a Communist revolution when people tell the truth. Social media platforms can’t stop the truth from being spread far and wide. Big Tech can’t stop the truth. Communist Democrats can’t stop the truth. I stand with the truth and the people. We will overcome!’”
This article portrays a pretty central stance, and this is shown through its inclusion of direct quotes and facts. It does not factor in opinions into the article. However, Stirgus and Mitchell fail to balance their sources while reporting on this subject matter. If they had included more from Twitter, they could provide a more central view of the issue, rather than a slight-left view. Therefore this article can be considered pretty reliable.
We will take a closer look at more examples like this below, providing a further investigation into the reliability of the Toronto Star’s articles. This will include its use of selection bias, omission bias, and the quality of its sources and facts used.
Analysis of Reliability in the Toronto Star Opinion Pieces
Opinion-style journalism is a suitable venue for reporters to express their opinions and beliefs, even if excessive opinion might be something to avoid while producing a general news article. Although opinion pieces are less trustworthy because they are subjective, they can still be worthwhile to read to increase one’s understanding of various political viewpoints.
The Toronto Star’s opinions have caused some issues in the past with their reliability in their tendency to promote liberal ideologies and individuals; the group has been involved in several controversies where they have been charged with having a deep bias against those who are unvaccinated. The article, “When it Comes to Empathy for the Unvaccinated, Many of us Aren’t Feeling it,” was written as a reporting piece for Greater Toronto News, but the inclusion and poor placement of contentious comments read more as an opinion piece. These comments led to readers feeling uncomfortable with the hateful message. Their dislike for anti-vaccinators superseded their overall image of the paper which even made their pro-vaccination audience uncomfortable.
Quality of Sources and Facts Used
The Toronto Star can be good at using reliable sources from both sides of the ideological divide and citing facts as evidence, however, this is not the case for every article. For instance, think about, “Fertility Clinics are in Need of Provincial Oversight.” In this article from Joyce Ghaly, she didn’t use any quotes, but she did provide four examples of their claims. Of those four examples, all four supported her claim, allowing no support for the other side.
In addition to that, the author’s three sources for the article were as follows:
- The Norman Barwin case
- Author’s Unknown Client
- Qi Zhang, lost 65 egg’s in a freezer malfunction
The number of sources used is a little lacking, but the diversity and credibility appear to be the biggest problem, as two of them are drastic incidents, one is the author’s client, and none are in support of the other side. The lack of sources supporting her claims against these private fertility centers is also concerning. The article is accurate in its statement of facts but provides no evidence to support its negative claims about these fertility clinics. They consistently lean towards the disapproval of the fertility clinic’s regulations when writing it, giving an average quality source and a lack of holistic facts to the article.
The author, Joyce Ghaly, only uses sources supporting her take on the problem, like the Norman Barwin case, the unknown client, and Qi Zhang. The author also paraphrases a lot and leaves out key pieces of information to direct the thoughts of the readers. This is shown when she says:
“ICSI’s efficacy and necessity are not nearly as well studied as they should be.”
Here she makes a generalizing statement without actually including any of the studies that have been conducted on ICSI’s efficacy and necessity. Although there may not be tons of studies done on ICSI, if all of the studies that have been done come to the same conclusion, this consistency could be the reason why there haven’t been more studies done on it. This left-out information can lead the reader to believe that ICSI has barely been tested. The evidence, then, points to this article as not being as trustworthy as it could be for information on infertility clinics.
In the article, Ghaly makes many claims and presents them as facts, but doesn’t have evidence to support them. One is:
“A stark example came about in 2018 where a woman in Toronto lost 65 frozen eggs due to the malfunction of a cryogenic storage tank. Such incidents would be significantly less common if the industry was stringently regulated.”
She doesn’t provide any research or evidence supporting the claim that cryogenic storage tank malfunctions would be less common with more government regulations. She does this again when she says:
“But how can fertility doctors obtain true informed consent for procedures like ICSI when doctors themselves lack comprehensive knowledge of the risks and benefits, given the procedure is not well studied?”
Here she states that the procedure is not well studied, but has no evidence in support of that claim. She uses unsubstantiated claims to further her overall claim of needing more regulation, which is a left-leaning ideal. To strengthen her position, she could use more facts and sources from experts or provide more evidence for her claims.
Selection and Omission Bias
In a more extreme example from the Toronto Star, we can see an author portray disapproval of the Republican party’s opinions on transgender youth, even though he tries to be objective. The article, “Transgender Youth are the New Target for Republican Culture Warriors” by Edward Keenan, tends to focus on the Republicans’ “obsession” with America’s culture war and leaves out any mention of any Democratic actions with the culture war of America. Furthermore, he only uses extreme examples from party members such as:
“Late last month, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green said if her children were assigned a transgender camp counsellor, her husband would ‘beat him into the ground,’ and that such an approach was ‘exactly how we need to stand up to this stuff.’”
Throughout the article, Keenan includes lots of evidence to back up his statements, but he doesn’t allow the politicians to defend and explain their statements. He takes specific quotes and frames them with his narrative of their obsession. The author omits the fact that sensible Republican politicians have come out with more reasonable legislation for issues amongst America’s culture war, namely transgender issues. Instead, he only focuses on more far-right Republicans and their remarks and legislation. He also fails to acknowledge any democratic involvement within the culture wars, including a lack of transgender support from the Democratic side.
In the article we discussed earlier, “Fertility Clinics are in Need of Provincial Oversight” the author omits any comments from fertility clinics, and she frames the title to support her view of fertility clinics. She doesn’t include any opposing accounts and only gives claims in support of her own belief instead of a fact-based point of view, reducing her reliability. Additionally, none of the sources that Ghaly used had any support for the other side, and they were also not very credible seeing as two were rare incidents and one was her client.
In opinion pieces, issues with factuality, sources, selection, and omission are frequently present. The articles we’ve covered so far are mostly biased and exclude adequate relevant background and information that may contradict the author’s position. As a news organization with a liberal slant, the Toronto Star has a small incentive to continue appealing to liberal viewpoints to maintain the interests of its sizable left-wing readership. But now that we’ve enumerated typical trustworthiness indications, you may stay current by keeping yourself informed on the most accurate news.
So Is the Toronto Star Reliable?
Finally, it can be argued that the Toronto Star is a fairly reliable news source with an adequate reputation for journalistic integrity, and some lone exceptions, therefore the degree of truth in its publications fluctuates. The more you research media reliability and accuracy, the simpler it will be for you to spot problems with sources, selection, omission, and factuality. To help with this, you can use Biasly’s News Bias Checker to uncover reliability problems and assist you in finding the most accurate and dependable news.