What's on each page
Read: Every row is one of the last day's top stories, as told by a large outlet with a left-leaning audience, an independent benchmark (reader-funded where possible, otherwise a labeled wire or public-media stand-in) and a large outlet with a right-leaning audience. Under each article is a short, fact-based check: a grade against Jim Lehrer's rules of journalism, bias to watch, and where it agrees and splits with the other two.
Watch: The same story on screen: a clip from a large outlet with a left-leaning audience, an independent, public-media or other labeled stand-in benchmark, and a clip from a large outlet with a right-leaning audience. Each clip is labeled as a news report or commentary, and graded only on what is said in its transcript. We don’t republish transcripts: each clip’s “Transcript” link opens it on YouTube, where the “Show transcript” button has the full text, and each quoted lapse links to its moment in the clip.
Outlet labels are approximate.
How we grade
Each article or clip gets a letter grade for how it reports, not for whether we agree with it. The standard is Jim Lehrer's rules of journalism (Aspen Institute, 1997). We grade only text or transcript we actually read. If we read only part of a piece, the popout says so. Clips we haven't been able to review are marked Not graded yet.
Jim Lehrer's 16 rules
Jim Lehrer, longtime anchor of the PBS NewsHour, set out 16 rules for his own journalism in the Aspen Institute's 1997 report "Journalism and Society." Below is each rule in our own short words. For his exact wording, see Open Culture's reprint of the full list; PBS NewsHour also published his shorter list from his 2006 Harvard commencement speech.
- Only publish what you can stand behind.
- Don't twist, lie, tilt or inflate a story.
- Never fake a fact or invent a quote.
- Treat every story with the care you'd want if it were about you.
- Expect at least one other side or version of every story.
- Respect the audience as just as smart, caring and decent as you.
- Give the people you cover that same respect.
- Treat everyone as innocent until proven guilty.
- Keep private lives private unless the story truly makes them relevant.
- Keep opinion and analysis apart from straight news, and label them clearly.
- Use anonymous sources only on rare, major occasions, and never let anyone attack someone else anonymously.
- Don't air profanity or graphic violence unless the story needs it to be understood.
- Total objectivity may be out of reach, but fairness is always possible.
- Employers should discipline journalists who are careless with facts or reputations.
- The audience deserves to know your principles and how you work.
- News is not entertainment.
How each rule shows up in a grade
- Rule 1: doing nothing you can't defend
- No single deduction. It is why every deduction we make must be backed by a quoted phrase or a timestamped quote, so each grade can be defended. No points come off a piece under this rule by itself.
- Rule 2: no distorting, lying, slanting or hype
- A loaded word or phrase in the outlet's own voice costs 12 points. A claim, analysis or opinion in the outlet's own voice that isn't labeled costs 24.
- Rule 3: no fake facts or made-up quotes
- Fabrication is an automatic F. A factual error, or a claim the piece can't support, costs 24 points, and we cite the correct fact and its source.
- Rule 4: care, as if the story were about you
- No direct check. We don't deduct points under this rule.
- Rule 5: at least one other side
- Leaving out a fact or voice that the other two pieces report, including airing only one side, costs 18 points.
- Rule 6: respecting the audience
- No direct check. We don't deduct points under this rule.
- Rule 7: respecting the people covered
- No direct check. Loaded words about a person can cost 12 points under rule 2, but there is no separate deduction for this rule.
- Rule 8: innocent until proven guilty
- Treating people who are charged as guilty counts as an unlabeled own-voice claim and costs 24 points.
- Rule 9: private lives
- No direct check. We don't deduct points under this rule.
- Rule 10: separating and labeling opinion
- An unlabeled claim, analysis or opinion in the outlet's own voice, or a guest's inside a news segment, costs 24 points. On Watch, each clip is labeled as a news report or commentary.
- Rule 11: anonymous sources and anonymous attacks
- If the core claim rests only on anonymous sources, with no named official or document behind it, the piece loses 45 points. An unnamed source on another point, or a figure with no stated source, costs 18. Letting an unnamed source attack someone is an automatic F.
- Rule 12: profanity and violence
- No direct check. We don't deduct points under this rule.
- Rule 13: fairness over objectivity
- Partly covered: the 18 point omission deduction (including airing only one side) and the 12 point loaded word deduction. The same point values apply to the left, independent and right columns.
- Rule 14: discipline for reckless journalists
- No check. This rule is about newsroom employers, not about a single piece, so we don't grade it.
- Rule 15: being open about principles and process
- We apply this rule to ourselves: this page publishes our rules, point values and cutoffs, and every deduction is listed in the popout. Pieces are not graded on it.
- Rule 16: not in the entertainment business
- No direct check. We don't deduct points under this rule.
How scoring works
Each piece starts at 100 points and loses points for every Jim Lehrer rule it breaks. The letter cutoffs are fixed: A 90+, B 80s, C 70s, D 60s, F under 60. The deduction weights are set strictly, aiming for a bell-shaped spread of scores. Letters come straight from the score, with no ranking or reshuffling afterward:
| Grade | Score |
|---|---|
| A | 90–100 |
| B | 80–89 |
| C | 70–79 |
| D | 60–69 |
| F | Under 60 |
What each lapse costs:
| Lapse | Points |
|---|---|
| Central lapse: the core claim rests solely on anonymous sources, with no named official or document backing it in the piece | −45 |
| A claim, analysis or opinion in the outlet's own voice (or a guest's, inside a news segment) that isn't labeled as such, including treating people charged as guilty | −24 |
| A factual error, or a claim the piece can't support | −24 |
| An unnamed source (or anonymous sourcing on a core claim that named officials or documents also support), or a figure with no stated source | −18 |
| Leaving out a fact or voice that the other pieces report, including airing only one side | −18 |
| A loaded word or phrase in the outlet's own voice | −12 |
Fabrication, or letting an unnamed source attack someone, is an automatic F. A deduction for a factual error must cite the correct fact and its source. Copies of the same wire story get the same deductions unless the outlet changed the text. Every deduction is backed by a quoted phrase (articles) or a timestamped quote (video), and the popout lists each one. A clip whose transcript notes can't back its lapses stays “Not graded yet”. The point values were calibrated once, on Oct. 20, 2026, to come as close as the pool allows to a bell curve aimed at 10% A, 15% B, 20% C, 15% D and 40% F. Pieces with no lapses at all keep their A, so the actual mix depends on how clean the day’s reporting is; on Oct. 20 the 54 graded pieces on the Read and Watch pages (30 articles and 24 clips) were 28% A, 20% B, 20% C, 15% D and 17% F. We never adjust a single piece's score to fit those shares, and there are no plus or minus grades.
Grades are relative to a deliberately demanding standard. An F means a piece broke enough of Lehrer's rules to fall below 60 on our scale. It isn't a verdict on the outlet or its audience. The same point values apply to the left, independent and right columns alike. The scale is harsh because most news falls short of Lehrer's standard.
How we choose the columns
- Each row is one specific news event. All three pieces must be news reporting on that event, published within about a day of each other. If we can't fill all three columns, we drop the row.
- From the Left: large outlets whose audiences lean left, such as NBC, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, ABC, NPR and MS NOW.
- From the Right: large outlets whose audiences lean right, such as Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Washington Examiner and the Washington Free Beacon.
- Left and right labels describe audience, based on published media-bias ratings (AllSides, Ad Fontes Media, Media Bias/Fact Check). They're approximate, and they aren't a judgment of any single article.
- Outlets rotate: no outlet more than twice per column per day, on both Read and Watch. We favor the biggest outlets by audience; when an outlet has already appeared twice in a column, we swap in another major outlet with comparable reporting on the same event, or drop the story for the day.
Independent (the middle column)
The Independent column is the straightest independent report we can find on the same event. We prefer reader-funded newsrooms (for example CalMatters, the Texas Tribune and the Kyiv Independent). When none has covered the event, we use a wire service, a public broadcaster or another news channel and label it as a stand-in: “wire stand-in,” “public media” or “European news channel (stand-in)” or “commercial stand-in (Nexstar)” for The Hill and NewsNation, which are owned by Nexstar Media Group. Stand-ins are used only when no reader-funded independent outlet covered the event. The benchmark gets the same grading as the other two columns.
Notes and corrections
Notes describe only features of each piece that anyone can check: who is sourced, what is quoted, what is left out compared with the other two pieces, and how the headline matches the text. The Country takes no position on the issues covered.
If you find an error in a grade or a note, tell us at our Substack, for example by replying to any newsletter issue or leaving a comment. We correct errors on the page and note the change.