How We Choose News Sources for Aplomb
Aplomb shows news only from vetted newsrooms. Each one had to meet all six criteria below before its videos could appear in the feed, and we check them again every quarter. This page is the full method behind our list of news sources.
The Six Criteria Every Newsroom Must Meet
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1. Original reporting
The outlet employs reporters who gather news first-hand. Aggregators, commentary channels and creator accounts are excluded.
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2. A public corrections policy
The outlet publishes how it corrects errors, and we check that corrections are actually made and labeled.
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3. Editorial independence from government and owners
Public funding and private ownership are both accepted; control of the newsroom by a government or an owner is not. We look at charters, governance, owner interventions on record and independent assessments. Opinion pages are judged separately from news.
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4. Clear separation of news and opinion
Opinion, analysis and sponsored content are labeled. Aplomb only shows news videos.
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5. Transparent ownership and funding
Who owns the outlet and how it makes money must be public.
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6. High factual reporting rating from at least one independent rater
We check AllSides, Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check. At least one must rate the outlet high for factual reporting or reliability.
How We Use Independent Bias Ratings
We do not rate outlets ourselves. For every source we record the published ratings of AllSides, Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check, with a link and the date we checked them. You can compare them all on the media bias chart.
Where Our Sources Lean, and Why
No newsroom is free of bias, and our list is no exception. Of the 35 newsrooms in Aplomb, AllSides rates 8 Center, 13 Lean Left and 1 Left, and does not rate the other 13, most of them outside the US. None leans right on its scale. Media Bias/Fact Check places The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail and 9News right of center.
Political lean is never a reason to keep a newsroom out: one rated left or right of center joins on the same terms as any other, and its lean is shown on its profile. The gap comes from the criteria, applied the same way to every outlet. When we checked right-of-center newsrooms in 2026, most fell short on one of three points: a factual reporting rating below High, no published corrections policy, or a video channel made mostly of talk shows and opinion rather than news reports.
The rating scales are also American. "Left" and "right" on AllSides and Media Bias/Fact Check describe US politics, so a public broadcaster rated Lean Left there can sit near the center of its own country's debate.
The Today ranking counts the headlines of a wider mix, right-of-center newsrooms included (see below). Know a right-of-center newsroom that meets all six criteria? Suggest it.
How Sources Are Reviewed and Removed
Every quarter we recheck each outlet's ratings, corrections record and ownership. If an outlet stops meeting a criterion, we pause its videos and note the change in our corrections log. The Aplomb Editorial Team carried out the last quarterly review on October 14, 2026.
Before a newsroom is added, we also check that it has an official YouTube channel that publishes Shorts and allows embedding, since Aplomb plays every video in the official YouTube player.
The full rules for how we write about sources, apps and ratings are in our editorial policy.
Sources Under Review
No source is under review right now.
An outlet under review stays in the feed until the review ends. If we remove it, the decision and the reason are logged on our corrections page.
Headlines We Read for the Today Ranking
The six criteria decide which videos you see. To rank the stories in Today, we read the headlines of a wide range of newsrooms, including some we never show, such as outlets in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, so the ranking reflects what the whole world is covering. These newsrooms do not have to meet all six criteria, because none of their videos or articles appear in the app. Each one rated by Media Bias/Fact Check must score at least Mostly Factual, so a newsroom with a weak factual record cannot push a fringe story up the ranking; the few it does not rate are established French-language newspapers and broadcasters. The mix is broader than our video sources and includes right-of-center newsrooms such as The Wall Street Journal and Le Parisien. Some paywalled newspapers count in the ranking too, but we do not link to their articles.
Suggest a News Source
Know a newsroom that meets these criteria? Suggest it here with its name and website. We review every suggestion at the next quarterly check.
Every source on this page, in one vertical video feed.
