mediabiasfactcheck.com

What It Is

Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC), founded in 2015, is an independent media bias and fact-checking resource website. It primarily rates news outlets, websites, and information sources for political bias, factual accuracy, and overall credibility. Its positioning is closer to a “media source credibility profile database” than a real-time fact-checking platform for individual news articles.

Core Features

MBFC’s core offering is media source ratings, including left/right bias, factual reporting level, credibility, and explanations of bias. The site also provides Filtered Search, Factual Search, daily featured fact checks, original articles on media bias, a country freedom map, U.S. senator ratings, and a data API. Notably, MBFC clearly states that its ratings are completed through human evaluation and that it does not use AI to generate bias or credibility conclusions, using tools similar to Grammarly only for text editing.

Pricing

Basic content is available for free, and the site is funded through third-party advertising, reader donations, and membership subscriptions. The main text indicates that ad-free membership starts at $3/month and can be canceled; donations do not necessarily remove ads. Data API Access is also available, but the collected content does not disclose specific API pricing.

Pros and Cons

Its strengths include broad coverage, with the main text claiming more than 10,000 ratings; a transparent methodology; and long-term citations by USA Today, Reuters Fact Check, NPR, The Washington Post, and others. It is also used by schools, libraries, and research projects. MBFC emphasizes that it does not accept funding from corporations, foundations, political organizations, or advocacy groups, giving it a strong narrative of independence.

The limitations are that media bias ratings inherently involve subjective judgment, and even with a standardized methodology, controversy is difficult to avoid entirely. The site’s team is relatively small, and the influence of the founder as well as volunteer/contract researchers is fairly visible. It is more suited to English-language and U.S. media ecosystems, so assessments of non-English or non-Western media should be cross-checked with local context.

Who It’s For

MBFC is suitable for general readers who want to assess the reliability of news sources. It is also useful as a reference tool for media literacy courses, librarians, researchers, journalists, and fact-checkers. For serious research, it is recommended to compare its ratings with sources such as AllSides, NewsGuard, and Ad Fontes Media.

Access in China

Given the type of site it is, MBFC is not a high-risk interactive service and can usually be accessed directly. However, loading speed may be affected by overseas hosting, ad scripts, and the WordPress ecosystem. For users in China, the biggest barrier is not access itself, but understanding the English-language content and the U.S. media context.