Research Guides: POLS 091SR: Presidential Campaign Literacy (SC): Home

News Resources

News & Magazines at Swarthmore
This guide walks you through setting up online access to New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other major publications
National Journal
- This link opens in a new window
Political news site, see particularly:
• 2024 Election Hub
• Race Tracker - candidate information, polling, and FEC filings for primary and general elections. Includes latest political ads for each race.
• Events - can RSVP to bi-weekly Cook Catch-Ups with Charlie Cook (the pollster behind the widely used ratings of districts being "Likely Democrat," "Toss Up," etc.)
Tripod Library Search
Best place to check to see if the library offers digital access to a news source (or book, article, journal, film, etc.)

Other library research guides:

News & Newspapers (TriCo Libraries Guide)
Points to more library databases and links for finding news articles, TV news, etc. Includes tools for historical and current news.
Government Information (TriCo Libraries Guide)
Databases for looking up Congressional hearing transcripts, bills, legal cases, and other government documents

Evaluating news publications (bias, etc.)

Resources for identifying the overall political bias of particular news sources. It's not an exact science- these resources won't always agree with each other. Sometimes the ratings are different for a publication's news versus opinion sections (e.g. look up the Wall Street Journal in these resources).

Media bias ratings can complement your own viewing of a source's homepage and evaluating the topics, perspectives, and language, as well as looking up the publication and seeing how others refer to it.

Media Cloud Directory
Look up a publication in this directory to see which collections it's included in (e.g. "Tweeted Mostly by Followers of Conservative Politicians 2019")
All Sides
Media Bias Fact Check
Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart

Media Monitoring

Shazam for News (Ground News)
Trace a story across media outlets - find out which outlet first broke the story and how coverage differs across publications with different political leanings. Ground News' media bias labels are based on a synthesis of the ratings from All Sides, Media Bias Fact Check, and Ad Fontes.
News Blindspots (Ground News)
Features stories that are largely being reported by news outlets on one side of the political spectrum

Tip: Consider enabling the setting Show Grayscale Images (top of screen). Researchers who work with potentially upsetting media have found that lower-fidelity media (grayscale instead of color, image instead of video) has a lower emotional impact.

Fact Checking

Politifact: Elections
Longstanding fact-checking project
Fact-Checking Projects (Duke Reporters Lab)
Updated global directory of fact-checking projects from the US and around the world.

Tip: For the US, it's easier to use the Browse in List option instead of the map.
Research: "Fact-checking" fact checkers (HKS Misinformation Review)
"This study examined four fact-checking organizations (so-called fact checkers)—Snopes, PolitiFact, Logically, and the Australian Associated Press FactCheck (AAP)—by analyzing their fact-checking articles from January 1, 2016, to August 31, 2022."

News About News

Misinformation Monitor (NewsGuard)
Monthly newsletter reporting on AI-generated news sites and other developments in misinformation. Also highlights news outlets that NewsGuard editors have identified as highly trustworthy.
Nieman Lab
Reporting and opinion on the media industry