Most Reliable News Sources, Ranked

Reuters

The only outlet in Aplomb that Media Bias/Fact Check rates Very High for factual reporting, with an Ad Fontes Media score of 44.97. As a wire service, Reuters writes for clients across the political spectrum, and all three raters place it at or near the center. Is Reuters reliable?

Global News

Canada's Global TV network ranks second, with an Ad Fontes Media score of 44.63 and High from Media Bias/Fact Check; it leans slightly left on our combined score. Its owner, Corus Entertainment, changed hands in October 2026, when its lenders took 99% of the company, and we will check the new owners' record at each quarterly review. Is Global News biased?

CBC News and AP

Tied on our combined score. Canada's public broadcaster and the American news cooperative both get High from Media Bias/Fact Check and score above 44 with Ad Fontes Media. Both lean slightly left on our combined score. CBC News · AP News bias

The Christian Science Monitor

The highest-ranked newspaper, and one of the most central. Its slower, explanatory coverage scores 44.23 with Ad Fontes Media. It publishes few short videos, so you will see it rarely in the feed. The Christian Science Monitor

Financial Times and The Globe and Mail

Tied, just behind. Both are business-minded papers of record, rated High by Media Bias/Fact Check and close to 44 by Ad Fontes Media, and both sit in our center zone. Financial Times · The Globe and Mail

ABC News and NBC News

The two American broadcast networks in Aplomb rank close together, with Ad Fontes Media scores of 43.66 and 42.84. Both lean slightly left. ABC News · NBC News

NPR

Rounding out the top 10, NPR scores 42.69 with Ad Fontes Media and High with Media Bias/Fact Check, and leans slightly left. Axios is just behind, in 11th place, with a score of 42.53. Is NPR biased? · Axios

A few big names sit near the bottom of this list. In each case, one rater is noticeably harsher than the other:

• BBC News: Ad Fontes Media scores it 44.63, one of the highest scores we track, but Media Bias/Fact Check lowered it to Mostly Factual after the BBC admitted a misleading edit of a Donald Trump speech in a 2025 documentary. Is BBC biased?
• The Wall Street Journal: Reliable (42.89) for Ad Fontes Media, Mostly Factual for Media Bias/Fact Check, whose rating covers the opinion pages as well as the news. The Wall Street Journal
• Bloomberg: Reliable for Ad Fontes Media, Mostly Factual for Media Bias/Fact Check. Is Bloomberg biased?
• The Guardian: High for Media Bias/Fact Check, but 39.54 for Ad Fontes Media, just under its Reliable range, mainly because of the share of analysis and opinion in the content it sampled. The Guardian
• Semafor: High for Media Bias/Fact Check, and Generally Reliable (39.76) for Ad Fontes Media, also just under 40. Semafor

Even the last place on this list is a good score: every outlet on this list meets our six criteria, including a high factual rating from at least one independent rater.

Reliability measures whether an outlet gets its facts right. Lean measures which way its framing and story choices tilt. The two are independent: the top 10 above includes outlets in the center zone and outlets that lean slightly left. Of the outlets in Aplomb, 15 sit in the center zone of our combined score, 18 lean slightly left, and 2 lean slightly right. None is rated Left or Right. The media bias chart plots both scores at once, so you can pick outlets that are reliable and spread across the spectrum.

Ratings are a shortcut, not a verdict. For an outlet that is not on this list, these checks take a few minutes:

1. Find its corrections page. Reliable outlets correct errors publicly and say what changed.
2. Look for bylines and datelines. Named reporters and a place of reporting mean someone answers for the story.
3. Follow the sources. Good stories name who said what and link to documents.
4. Check the labels. Opinion, analysis and sponsored content should be marked as such.
5. Find out who owns it and how it makes money. A newsroom that hides this is a warning sign.
6. Look it up on AllSides, Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check, and compare.

Our guide on how to spot media bias goes further.

Two of the three raters we use score factual reliability; AllSides rates only political lean. We put both on the same 1 to 5 scale and take the average:

• Media Bias/Fact Check: its factual reporting rating, where Very High is 5, High is 4 and Mostly Factual is 3.
• Ad Fontes Media: its reliability score, rescaled so that 40 (the start of its Reliable range) is 4 and 48 is 5.

Where Ad Fontes Media has not rated an outlet, its score is Media Bias/Fact Check's alone, which is why several outlets share a score of exactly 4.00. Outlets with the same score to two decimals share a rank. The same method places every outlet on our media bias chart.

• It is not a ranking of all media. It covers the newsrooms in Aplomb, which we picked against six criteria. Outlets we exclude are not ranked.
• The gaps are small. From Reuters at 4.81 to Bloomberg at 3.55, every outlet here is rated Mostly Factual or better.
• Ratings change. Raters revise their scores after new reviews; we check ours every quarter and log changes on the corrections page.