Media Matters for America has a clear left-leaning bias, and the three most-cited independent rating services all agree on it. Every major bias rater — AllSides, Media Bias/Fact Check, and Ad Fontes Media — places the organization on the left, with scores ranging from “Left” to “Strong Left.” What sets Media Matters apart from many politically slanted outlets is that its reports are generally well-sourced: raters consistently find the underlying facts accurate even as they flag the framing as one-directional. In short, the bias is real, it is openly declared, and it shapes what the organization chooses to cover far more than it distorts what it reports.
What Independent Bias Raters Say
Three widely used services have scored Media Matters. Their conclusions line up on direction and differ mostly on how they weigh selection against accuracy.
AllSides rates Media Matters “Left” at -4.5 on its -6 to +6 scale, with “high” confidence supported by a December 2021 independent review. AllSides notes that Media Matters is transparent about its orientation, describing itself as a “progressive research and information center.”1AllSides. Media Matters Media Bias Rating
Media Bias/Fact Check gives the organization a bias score of -6.5 (“Left”) but pairs it with a “High” factual reporting score and a “High Credibility” rating. MBFC explains the split directly: while Media Matters’ “sole purpose is to paint the right negatively,” its reports are “typically properly sourced to credible media outlets, direct quotes, and official documents.” The same review notes the site uses “emotionally loaded language to favor the left and denigrate the right.”2Media Bias/Fact Check. Media Matters
Ad Fontes Media places Media Matters at -15.06 on bias (“Strong Left”) and 26.45 on reliability, which falls into its “Mixed Reliability/Opinion OR Other Issues” range. Ad Fontes attributes the mixed reliability figure to the heavy opinion and analysis content in Media Matters output rather than to factual errors.3Ad Fontes Media. Media Matters for America Bias and Reliability
Read together, the three ratings tell a consistent story. The direction of the bias is not in dispute. The intensity ranges from moderate to strong depending on the rater’s methodology. Factual accuracy holds up. Framing does not.
Why the Bias Runs One Direction
Media Matters was built to be one-directional. The organization describes its mission as “comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media,” and defines “conservative misinformation” as “news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda.”4C-SPAN. Media Matters for America5Media Matters. About Us There is no parallel program aimed at liberal media. That is by design.
The design traces to founder David Brock, a former conservative operative who publicly broke with the right in a 1997 Esquire essay and his 2002 memoir Blinded by the Right. Brock founded Media Matters as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2004 with $1.75 million in first-year backing from the Democracy Alliance.6The Nation. How David Brock Built an Empire to Put Hillary in the White House Brock left the organization in November 2022, and Angelo Carusone became Chairman of the Boards of Directors.7Media Matters. Media Matters Announces Departure of David Brock
The organization has a rough conservative mirror. The Media Research Center, founded in 1987 by L. Brent Bozell III, monitors media for what it identifies as liberal bias.1AllSides. Media Matters Media Bias Rating Each watchdog targets the opposing side, and each treats the other’s work as unreliable. Media Matters has published analyses arguing that MRC studies purporting to prove liberal media bias “collapse under scrutiny.”8Media Matters. Media Research Center Neither is a general-purpose bias monitor, and neither claims to be.
What the Bias Looks Like in Practice
The most useful distinction when reading Media Matters is between selection bias and factual bias. The organization exhibits a great deal of the first and relatively little of the second. Its staff monitor print, broadcast, cable, radio, and internet outlets in real time, but only for material it categorizes as conservative misinformation. A reader relying solely on Media Matters would come away with a thorough catalog of conservative media failures and almost no awareness of equivalent problems on the left.
That selection focus turns into a specific kind of output: documentation packages that feed advertiser pressure campaigns. The pattern has produced measurable results.
In 2017, after the New York Times reported that Fox News and Bill O’Reilly had paid $13 million in settlements to five women alleging sexual harassment, Media Matters and allied organizations pressured advertisers to drop The O’Reilly Factor. At least 47 advertisers withdrew, including Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, BMW, Allstate, and GlaxoSmithKline.9Politico. Bill O’Reilly Boycott Fox News terminated O’Reilly on April 19, 2017.10The Guardian. Bill O’Reilly Fox News Sexual Harassment O’Reilly later attributed his firing to a “financial hit job” driven by “organized boycotts” from Media Matters, the Bonner Group, and Color of Change.11NBC News Today. Bill O’Reilly Sexual Harassment Allegations
A similar campaign preceded the end of Glenn Beck’s Fox News program. After Beck called President Obama a “racist” who harbored a “deep-seated hatred for white people” in a 2009 broadcast, at least 100 advertisers dropped his show.12Media Matters. Who’s Still Advertising on Beck Beck’s program ended in 2011. In March 2019, Media Matters released past audio recordings of Tucker Carlson that triggered advertiser scrutiny at Fox News.13The Washington Post. Tucker Carlson Under Fire
These campaigns illustrate the practical shape of the bias. Media Matters does not fabricate the quotes and settlements at the center of its reports. It gathers, packages, and distributes them, exclusively when the subject is conservative, with the goal of producing commercial and reputational consequences.
How to Read Media Matters as a Consumer of Information
For a reader trying to decide how much weight to give a Media Matters report, a few practical rules follow from the ratings.
Treat the primary sourcing as generally reliable. Quotations, video clips, transcripts, and settlement figures cited in Media Matters reports have held up well enough that even critical raters give the organization high marks on factual reporting. If a Media Matters piece says a host said a specific thing on air, the underlying clip usually confirms it.
Discount the framing. The organization’s characterizations, adjectives, and inferences about motive are the parts MBFC identified as emotionally loaded. Those are opinion layered onto fact and should be read that way.
Do not treat Media Matters as a survey of the media landscape. Because the organization does not cover liberal-media problems, its silence about a topic tells you nothing about whether the topic exists. For a broader picture, pair it with a conservative counterpart such as the Media Research Center or with raters that cover outlets across the spectrum.
Watch the date. As discussed below, litigation and government scrutiny have measurably reduced how much Media Matters publishes on some subjects, so an absence of recent coverage on a particular figure may reflect legal pressure rather than an editorial judgment about newsworthiness.
Legal and Government Pressure Now Shaping the Coverage
Any current read on Media Matters has to account for the pressure the organization is under, because that pressure is affecting output.
In November 2023, Media Matters published a report documenting that advertisements from Apple, Oracle, and Xfinity were appearing next to pro-Nazi content on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. The report contributed to an advertiser exodus.14NPR. Media Matters Elon Musk New Lawsuit Elon Musk sued Media Matters on November 20, 2023, in the Northern District of Texas, alleging the group “knowingly and maliciously manufactured” the images.15Courthouse News Service. X Can’t Duck Media Matters Abusive Litigation Suit X later filed additional suits in Ireland and Singapore. In March 2025, Media Matters countersued in California, characterizing the litigation as a “worldwide campaign of intimidation.”
The chilling effect has been documented. Eric Hananoki, a Media Matters staffer who had authored 16 reports on Musk and X in the ten months before the lawsuit, had not published a single report on those subjects since the litigation began.14NPR. Media Matters Elon Musk New Lawsuit The organization laid off more than a dozen staff in May 2024, with President Carusone citing legal costs on “multiple fronts.”16Deadline. Media Matters Layoffs Elon Musk
Government scrutiny has followed. On May 21, 2025, the Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation alleging illegal collusion with advertisers, demanding budgets, communications with other watchdog groups, and documents from the X litigation.17The New York Times. FTC Investigates Media Matters Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened a separate probe that a federal judge halted with a preliminary injunction.16Deadline. Media Matters Layoffs Elon Musk
None of this changes what the bias ratings say about past reporting. It does mean that the volume and targets of current reporting are being shaped by factors outside the newsroom, and a reader gauging bias in 2026 should factor that in alongside the rater scores.