{"id":54887,"date":"2026-03-18T01:09:59","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T07:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publicsquaremag.org\/?p=54887"},"modified":"2026-03-18T01:09:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T07:09:59","slug":"what-ratings-miss-about-associated-press-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publicsquaremag.org\/media-education\/what-ratings-miss-about-associated-press-bias\/","title":{"rendered":"The Biases that Aren’t Measured"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By most measures, today\u2019s media-literacy boom has been a public good. Charts from <\/span>Ad Fontes<\/span><\/a>, ratings from <\/span>AllSides<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Media Bias\/Fact Check<\/span><\/a>, \u201cnutrition labels\u201d from <\/span>NewsGuard<\/span><\/a>, and \u201cblindspot\u201d dashboards from <\/span>Ground News<\/span><\/a> give ordinary readers quick heuristics for what\u2019s trustworthy and how coverage breaks across left\u2013right lines. In a chaotic information environment, that\u2019s helpful. But these tools also flatten the very thing they\u2019re trying to measure. Bias is not just a point on a horizontal spectrum\u2014often it\u2019s embedded in what gets covered, who gets quoted, and how complexity is collapsed into a single line of copy. When rating services only score overt partisanship and headline-level reliability, they risk missing the blind spots that most shape public understanding.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

A recent essay in the Milwaukee Independent makes a similar point: rating platforms intended to counter spin can end up penalizing outlets that <\/span>refuse false equivalence<\/span><\/a>, confusing \u201cmoral clarity\u201d with \u201cpartisan bias.\u201d That critique should ring a bell for anyone who\u2019s ever read a nuanced beat story reduced to a pin on a bias chart.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Case Study: The AP, a Temple, and the Meaning of \u201cBigger\u201d<\/b><\/h3>\n

Consider Associated Press coverage of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints\u2019 Lone Mountain Nevada Temple in Las Vegas. An AP dispatch about temple growth asserted that the Lone Mountain temple would be \u201c<\/span>larger in size than the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris<\/span><\/a>,\u201d with a steeple nearly 200 feet tall. The phrase \u201clarger in size\u201d landed with neighbors\u2014and readers\u2014like a bomb. Larger than Notre Dame? The problem is that the temple is about one-third the size of Notre Dame and one hundred feet shorter. The error comes from a misunderstanding of square footage. \u00a0<\/span>That\u2019s framing bias, not partisan bias<\/span><\/a>\u2014and you won\u2019t find a category for it on most ratings sites.

Today\u2019s media-literacy boom has been a public good.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div><\/span>What happened next is revealing. The Associated Press was contacted, but they did not respond to the request for comment, nor did they add a correction or clarification to their woefully misleading claim. As of today, the AP story still contains the inaccurate \u201clarger than Notre Dame\u201d line.<\/p>\n

Case Study: What Wasn\u2019t Said at General Conference<\/b><\/h3>\n

In 2024, AP ran a story on the conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints under the headline \u201cLatter-day Saints leader addresses congregants <\/span>without a word on racial or LGBTQ+ issues<\/span><\/a>.\u201d That piece treated omission\u2014what didn\u2019t happen\u2014as the news. That isn\u2019t a left-right bias, <\/span>but it is quite obviously a bias nonetheless<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The author, Hannah Schoenbaum, has no background in religion reporting, but instead covers government, politics, and LGBT+ rights. Six months later, she was still on the same beat, and her coverage of the conference mostly covered political angles. Despite these two incidents, AP still assigned Schoenbaum to the same article<\/span> for the most recent conference<\/span><\/a>. She was also responsible for the inaccurate Las Vegas Temple coverage.<\/span><\/p>\n

The bias here isn\u2019t a partisan one; it\u2019s a worldview one. When you assign a political and LGBT+ rights reporter to do religious reporting, what you get are only stories that fit into the narrow lens of the reporter. This headline imports the author’s opinion about what should have been spoken about into a story that was in fact about something entirely different. The headline \u201cLatter-day Saints leader addresses congregants without a word on environmental issues in Asia\u201d is equally as accurate, but manages to convey an entirely different story.

The bias here isn\u2019t a partisan one; it\u2019s a worldview one.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div><\/span>This month, the same reporter covered General Conference again, foregrounding forgiveness in the wake of a Michigan chapel attack and the passing of President Russell M. Nelson. Many Latter-day Saints felt the tone was better. The point isn\u2019t to scold AP; it\u2019s to name how story selection, journalist selection, and angles constitute bias that isn\u2019t captured by left\u2013right meters.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Case Study: Larger than Life Abuse Findings<\/b><\/h3>\n

Similarly, the AP had investigative reporter Michael Rezendes devote <\/span>significant resources to sex abuse cases<\/span><\/a> within the Church of Jesus Christ.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rezendes received a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting about the sex abuse scandals inside the Catholic Church, systemic issues of offending priests being known, covered up, and moved to a new diocese to continue causing harm.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rezendes\u2019 selection for the assignment communicates certain ideas to the readers: There is a sex abuse problem in the Church of Jesus Christ; it is a problem of significant size and a serious institutional error.<\/span><\/p>\n

But what Rezendes actually found over the course of several years was that there are <\/span>some Latter-day Saints who commit sexual abuse<\/span><\/a> (he found three stories), including some of our leaders. They are excommunicated when they are discovered. The Church has a <\/span>helpline so that local leaders know how to follow complicated disclosure laws<\/span><\/a>. And the Church also tries to provide financial restitution to the victims.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tragic story, but one about the inevitable tragedy of human frailty rather than institutional cover-ups.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But by choosing to write long features for stories that would normally be reserved for <\/span>page-seven crime beats<\/span><\/a>, it communicates that this is news worth paying attention to, which communicates a nefariousness, pervasiveness, or culpability that <\/span>doesn\u2019t in fact exist<\/span><\/a> in any of the reported cases.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lasting impression left with many readers was of a sweeping institutional cover-up, even though the stories were ultimately about distinct criminal acts by individuals. That\u2019s a classic scale problem: to what extent does a set of horrific cases justify institutional generalization? Bias checkers don\u2019t score how disciplined news outlets are in attributing scale\u2014but it\u2019s central to how audiences come away thinking about an institution.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the effects of this bias are serious. The best available evidence suggests that Latter-day Saints <\/span>commit sexual abuse at rates significantly lower<\/span><\/a> than those of many other faiths or the general population. Our protective factors should be a lesson to others. Instead, a recent survey by YouGov had more people believing that abuse is a <\/span>\u201cvery big problem\u201d<\/span><\/a> in the Church of Jesus Christ, more than in the Southern Baptist churches, despite the fact that Southern Baptist churches had been involved in a <\/span>systemic controversy covering up sexual abuse<\/span><\/a>, dwarfing in severity the problems in the Church of Jesus Christ.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is that unfortunate misunderstanding a result of the editorial choices of the Associated Press? Do Americans know less about sexual abuse and where kids are safest because of the Associated Press\u2019 coverage? It\u2019s certainly possible, but it\u2019s not a kind of bias you would be able to identify in the media literacy tools currently available.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Bias You\u2019re More Likely to Encounter: Access and Sourcing<\/b><\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s a quieter example. I recently had a wonderful experience with Maggie Penman of <\/span>The Washington Post<\/span><\/i>. Penman runs \u201cThe Optimist,\u201d a column about positive things in the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After the Michigan attack on an LDS chapel, Penman ran a feature about <\/span>Latter-day Saints raising money for the attacker\u2019s family<\/span><\/a>\u2014an act of grace that surprised many readers. It was a beautiful and generous story. This is why I was surprised to find a quote by a religion scholar at the end of the article attacking Latter-day Saints: he disagreed with them on a doctrinal point. For those within the Latter-day Saint sphere, this attack from this commentator, who is a frequent critic, is unsurprising. What was surprising was that he was included.

Media checkers have done incredible work.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div><\/span>I reached out to Penman, and she told me that he was the only source she had. Sourcing networks are brittle; on deadline, reporters use the contacts they have. Penman wasn\u2019t trying to import any bias. She certainly wasn\u2019t trying to attack the community that she was lionizing through her article. She was just stuck with one specific network of people who impart certain biases to their work. This kind of result is everywhere: in tech, in policing, in religion reporting. But available bias tools have no way of measuring \u201caccess bias.\u201d<\/p>\n

What the Checkers Miss<\/b><\/h3>\n

Most popular rating systems do some things well: They reward corrections, penalize serial fabricators, and map partisan lean. However, several endemic newsroom behaviors, including those discussed above, fall outside their frameworks.<\/span><\/p>\n

None of these is chiefly about \u201cleft vs. right.\u201d They\u2019re about habits, networks, and time.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

My intention here is not to call out the media checkers. These are still emerging projects. And media checkers have done incredible work, shining light on real issues and helping to improve media literacy. My hope is to encourage their work. As they are continuing to grow, here are some suggestions of practical metrics that might be tracked and could add to our understanding of media bias:<\/span><\/p>\n