How The Facts, Jack Scores the News

Most media ratings tell you whether an outlet leans left or right. That’s interesting, but it doesn’t answer the question you actually care about:

“How did they handle this specific story?”

At The Facts, Jack, every analysis starts with the same rule: judge each outlet on the story in front of us, using the same definitions and the same scales every time. No permanent “good guys” or “bad guys,” no frozen outlet scores carried from one scandal to the next.

This glossary breaks down what our metrics mean, how they’re scored, and how they roll up into a single Credibility Score for each outlet on each story. The point isn’t to tell you what to think — it’s to show you how we got there so you can decide whether you agree.

If you ever disagree with a score, you can work backwards from this page: check the definitions, check the story, and decide for yourself whether the coverage lived up to the standard.

Comparative Metrics

Four core behaviors are scored for each outlet on each story. Together, these form the backbone of the analysis.

Spin (0–5): How much the outlet uses loaded language, one-sided framing, or advocacy-style tone.
Factual Integrity (1–5): How accurate the coverage is, and how well it matches the best available record of the story.
Strategic Silence (0–5): What important facts or context are missing, compared with the neutral baseline record.
Media Distortion (0–5): How far headlines, framing, and emphasis bend the audience’s impression away from the underlying record.

Scale notes:

For Spin, Strategic Silence, and Media Distortion, a score of 0 means we did not detect a meaningful problem in that category for this story.
For Factual Integrity, lower is better: 1 is fully accurate, 5 is very poor.

Spin (0–5)

What it measures: tone and framing.

0 – No detectable spin; straight, wire-style language.
1 – Very low spin; minor shading, mostly descriptive.
2 – Mild interpretive framing; some value-laden wording.
3 – Noticeable tilt; recurring one-sided emphasis.
4 – High spin; framing feels like advocacy.
5 – Extreme spin; closer to propaganda than reporting.

Factual Integrity (1–5)

What it measures: accuracy and evidence.

1 – Fully accurate; no substantive errors located.
2 – Minor slips or ambiguities; core facts are still right.
3 – Mixed; some facts correct, others oversimplified or misstated.
4 – Poor; frequent factual problems or weak sourcing.
5 – Very poor; major inaccuracies or reliance on debunked claims.

Strategic Silence (0–5)

What it measures: important things left out.

0 – No meaningful omissions; major facts and perspectives are present.
1 – Small gaps; mostly nuance rather than core elements.
2 – Noticeable gaps; a few important pieces of context are missing.
3 – Significant omissions; key facts or counterpoints are under-covered.
4 – Heavy omissions; major elements of the story are missing.
5 – Severe omissions; coverage is built on a very incomplete slice of reality.

Media Distortion (0–5)

What it measures: how much the overall impression matches the record.

0 – No distortion; impression closely matches the underlying facts.
1 – Very mild distortion; some emphasis, not seriously misleading.
2 – Mild distortion; noticeable sensationalism or skew.
3 – Moderate distortion; overall impression is clearly bent.
4 – High distortion; impression diverges strongly from the record.
5 – Extreme distortion; framing is deeply misleading.

Fact Check

Quoted claims are checked against documents, data, and credible reporting. Each claim is assigned a verdict with a written rationale. The verdict set is:

True – Supported by the best available evidence.
False – Contradicted by the best available evidence.
Misleading – Uses technically true facts in a way that creates a false or distorted impression.
Unsupported – No solid evidence either way; the claim goes beyond what is currently documented.
Alleged – Describes serious accusations that have not been fully adjudicated in court.

When a claim is marked Alleged, we flag that status clearly and explain what is known, what is disputed, and what has not yet been tested in court.

Hypocrisy & Narrative Drift

Hypocrisy Call-Out

Hypocrisy focuses on a single actor (not an outlet) and highlights a documented reversal or double standard:

A baseline statement or position (what they said or promised before).
A follow-up action or statement in the current story.
A short severity assessment from 1–5, based on how big and consequential the reversal is.

This section only appears when there is a clear, well-documented contradiction with severity of 3 or higher. Minor, explainable shifts do not qualify.

Narrative Drift

Narrative drift measures how far an actor has moved from their baseline position. It is expressed as an angle:

0°–29° – Minimal drift; broadly consistent with the baseline.
30°–59° – Mild drift; noticeable change in emphasis.
60°–89° – Moderate drift; substantial movement in rhetoric or framing.
90°–129° – Major drift; core message has flipped on key points.
130°–180° – Near-complete reversal.

We only draw a drift chart when at least one point reaches 90° or more, meaning a major reversal.

Bias, Context & Imagery

Bias Map

The bias map describes where each outlet sits on a left–right spectrum for this specific story, and how strong that lean is.

Lean: a horizontal position from left-leaning to right-leaning in the way the story is framed.
Strength: how strong that lean is (from very mild to very intense).

Important points:

Bias is not the same as credibility. An outlet can lean left or right and still be mostly accurate, or vice versa.
Positions are story-specific. We do not lock outlets into permanent bias positions across all stories.

Historical Context Handling

This measures how well an outlet situates the story inside the longer-term record:

Prior investigations and court rulings.
Established timelines.
Key past statements by the same actors.

Outlets score higher here when they reflect that record accurately and include key background needed to understand what is happening. They score lower when they selectively forget or misstate history, or present settled facts as unclear.

Imagery & Visual Framing

Images, B-roll, and on-screen graphics can push a story in subtle ways. For each outlet we:

Summarize the main visuals used for this story.
Note whether they amplify fear, outrage, sympathy, or neutrality.
Assess whether visuals help or hurt an accurate understanding of the underlying record.

Because of copyright limits, we link to source articles and describe imagery instead of reproducing it directly.

Credibility Score (0–100)

The Credibility Score (0–100) is our summary view of how an outlet handled a specific story. Higher means more credible coverage of that event: accurate, contextually honest, and minimally distorted.

We combine several components using fixed weights:

Comparative Metrics (Spin, Factual Integrity, Strategic Silence, Media Distortion) – 40%
Bias Map (lean and strength for this story) – 20%
Historical Context Handling – 15%
Imagery & Visual Framing – 15%
Hypocrisy & Narrative Drift – 10%

In practice:

Strong factual integrity, low distortion, and few omissions push credibility up.
Heavy spin, major omissions, and high distortion push it down.
Clear, honest treatment of the historical record and proportional visuals help; selective memory and sensational imagery hurt.
When a story involves a major reversal, outlets that surface and explain it score better than outlets that ignore or normalize it.

Credibility Bands

90–100 – Excellent coverage for this story.
80–89 – Strong; solid work with some bias or gaps.
70–79 – Mixed but usable; readers should be aware of the issues.
60–69 – Weak; significant omissions or distortion.
Below 60 – Poor coverage of this story.

The goal is transparency: you can see the definitions, understand the scales, and decide for yourself whether you agree with each outlet’s score on a given story.