Originally offered up as a feminist alternative to traditional women’s magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Vogue, Jezebel has become a strong resort for all things politics, entertainment, and celebrities. Upon browsing just one or two articles, new readers can quickly gauge that the news source offers uncensored takes on current events – or in their words “with teeth”.
So how does this unorthodox way of reporting news measure up with bias in a universally accepted way or by appropriate metrics? While the articles are consistently unfiltered and raw, they all tend to very clearly lean towards the liberal side. Jezebel has a bias rating of Very Liberal which is based on a variety of factors including its policy and politician leanings, article ratings, and the use of biased language. Its Reliability is rated as Good, and additional analytical insights are available in the other tabs.
Let’s explore how Jezebel got this rating.
Understanding Bias in a Professional Setting
Bias, by definition, is an “inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair.” With a definition like that, it’s no wonder that bias is seen as an abstract concept, often subjective, and always hard to pin. No one wants to think of themselves as biased but it is a normal and expected trait that rises naturally with the experiences and connections people live and form. If you see a friend or family member playing a sports match you’re likely to root for their team or to want to see them win. You’re biased towards that person because you hold a certain affinity towards them. Likewise this approach at deconstructing bias can apply to a multitude of contexts in daily life: alliances at work, preferences of any variety, even just knowing something can hold a bias for you over something you’ve never heard of. So how do we know when we are consuming bias? How does bias manifest itself in news? Can ostensible objectivity be replaced with subtle subjectivity?
The Media Bias Chart Source: Biasly
Everyone has heard the tired complaints of Fox news being too conservative and CNN being too liberal. If these are news sources, how can they have bias at all? The answer is a simple one: everyone has bias. Everyone, whether conscious of it or not, holds preferences towards one group of ideas or people rather than another. With this in mind, it is important to note that bias is not necessarily a bad or good thing and learning to understand and recognise bias can be crucial to better understanding another person’s side of the argument. 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.
Measuring bias in a news source oftentimes simply means comparing the amount of opinion-based articles to journalistic ones, looking and analysing the tone or voice in the article, searching for and identifying word choice and the use of polarising words and divisive language.
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. a 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.
How We Measure Bias in Jezebel
Biasly’s rating for Jezebel Times gives the paper a Computer AI Bias Score of -74, Very Liberal, a score generated by its AI-based algorithms. Biasly’s AI bias analysis focuses on the leaning of tone, opinion, and diction of the author, and their respective tendencies. For example, Biasly’s AI rated its abortion policies and criminal justice policies to be very liberal and typically represents them in a very liberal manner. It also found that conservative politicians such as Brett Kavanaugh and others were covered in a negative light.
Biasly has assigned a Very Liberal score as the 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.
For example, of the five most recent articles to be analysed by Biasly from Jezebel, all of them were rated as slightly conservative with many of them containing negative politician portrayals. However, the overall rating for Jezebel remains as center with a 2 leaning in the conservative direction due to its balance of neutral, liberal, and conservatively rated articles.
Analysis of Bias in Jezebel
We will begin by looking at the reader demographics for Jezebel. Jezebel’s audience is 64.65% male and 35.35% female. Jezebel’s audience is 97 percent female, and the site says it gets more than 37 million page views a month and about 200,000 unique visitors each day. Additionally, The largest age group of visitors are 25 – 34 year olds.
When determining bias, some of the most common metrics used include Tone, Tendency, Author, Diction, and Expediency Bias, which are the primary metrics we’ll focus on below.
- Tone: This represents the attitude of the writing, formed distinctively but related to the author’s word choices or diction.
- Diction: The specific words chosen by the writer.
- 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.
- Tendency measures how consistently an author shows bias in their work, including factors like their tone and perspective.
- 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.
Let’s start with a sample article published by Jezebel:
Jezebel, 2025
This article immediately holds a jarring tone from the second the headline is read. The use of the phrase, “Froth at the Mouth” has a satirical and radical take on the GOP’s actions in regard to Gaza. This clearly polarised language is already compelling evidence to place the article on the liberal side as the word choice has an obvious pejorative tone to it and is used against the GOP.
Moving past the headline, the subheading does not stray from this fearless tone. It includes calling the members of Congress who pledged to back the notion, “sycophants” – a term used to paint the members of Congress in a negative light very purposely. Moving on, the article image can be seen as a more center-leaning piece of media at least superficially.
Perhaps, after reading the article, and more specifically the line, “The convicted felon and war criminal spent the day side-by-side”, the image may represent two heinous figures side by side. Otherwise, it is just a headshot of two political figures that objectively did meet up and conduct business together without painting their faces or body language in any radical way. However, bias is most commonly found in the actual content of articles. Below is a key case study on how this article can be more closely analysed to show potential points of bias. Additionally, this article can be used to anecdotally reflect the Center bias leaning of Jezebel.
“We all knew Trump would be awful—on this and all issues.”
This is a straightforward judgment that aligns with a deeply liberal perspective, suggesting that Trump’s actions or policies are predictably bad, particularly in areas like foreign policy and human rights. The sentence implies that any reasonable person would have expected Trump to make harmful or misguided decisions.
“Two dumb—and genocidal—bitches telling each other ‘exactlyyy.”
This phrase uses derogatory language to insult both Trump and Netanyahu. Calling them “dumb” and “genocidal” is an inflammatory way to dismiss their views as not only ignorant but also morally reprehensible. The use of “bitches” here further serves to discredit their positions and to delegitimize their leadership, reflecting a liberal disdain for both figures.
“Trump’s heinous comments.”
Describing Trump’s comments as “heinous” is a moral judgment meant to provoke strong emotional reactions from readers. This type of language is often used to create a sense of moral superiority over the target of the criticism, in this case, Trump. The term implies that Trump’s words are not just wrong, but deeply immoral.
And, lastly:
“Mutually salivating over the prospect of ethnically cleansing Gaza.”
The term “ethnically cleansing” is emotionally loaded, as it refers to actions that are associated with extreme human rights violations. The choice of words like “salivating” further heightens the emotional charge of the statement. This language is meant to paint Trump and Netanyahu as eagerly and irresponsibly planning or supporting actions that would harm a population in a grave manner, which can be seen as part of a broader condemnation of Israeli policies towards Palestinians.
Meet the Owners
Anna Holmes is an award-winning writer and author as well as founder of the website Jezebel. A journalism graduate from New York University, Holmes has been an active member of the journalistic field for over 20 years. In 2007, she founded Jezebel which aimed to provide a fresh take for women’s magazines in the face of a content mess of “unattainable ideals of beauty and an endless (heterosexual) preoccupation with men.” The website was launched through Gawker Media with Anna Holmes as the working editor and was subsequently bought out by Univision Communications.
She is likely to lean liberal, especially in the context of political publications, due to personal experiences with gender inequality, social justice, and empathy for marginalized groups that she has written about while working for the New Yorker, The New York Times, and Washington Post. For many, issues such as women’s rights, equal pay, reproductive rights, and access to healthcare are fundamental concerns that align with liberal ideologies. When publications claim figures like Donald Trump are misogynistic, this could reinforce her perspective, particularly if she perceives his actions and rhetoric as harmful to women. For example, Trump’s controversial comments about women, his history of sexual assault accusations, and his stance on reproductive rights may lead a woman to view him as a misogynist. Liberal media often emphasize these aspects, framing them within a broader conversation about gender equality, which resonates with women who prioritize these issues.
How to Evaluate and Uncover Bias
Overall, the article suggests Jezebel leans liberal and employs emotionally charged language and rhetoric, which could indicate a biased presentation of news, favoring a progressive stance on political issues. Jezebel’s tendency leans liberal, as evidenced by the author’s language choices and political judgments, such as calling Trump’s policies predictably bad and using terms that morally condemn his actions. This reflects the site’s general bias toward progressive views. Additionally, Anna Holmes, the founder, has a background in journalism with a history of advocating for women’s issues, and her editorial direction has likely influenced the site’s tone and content.
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.
