How we rate outlets

Every outlet on MIVZAK has a general lean on a five-step scale: left, centre-left, centre, centre-right and right. It is a coarse read of the outlet's overall editorial line — not a judgement of any single article, and not a rating of reliability or accuracy.

An outlet without a broadly shared characterization, or one that doesn't cover politics (sports, tech), stays unrated. We would rather not rate than guess.

Where those sources disagree, the outlet stays unrated.

• How the outlet describes itself and its audience.
• Publicly known ownership and institutional affiliation.
• Published assessments by organizations that study media bias (such as AllSides, Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias/Fact Check for English-language outlets), and research and reporting on the Israeli press.

Every story page shows who covered it, split three ways: left (left and centre-left), centre, and right (right and centre-right). Each brand counts once, however many feeds it has. Unrated outlets are counted separately and never placed on the bar.

A story is a Blindspot when at least three rated outlets covered it, two or more on one side — and none on the other. The point is to show what one side of the media map is barely seeing.

The Hebrew wire has few rated left-leaning outlets (mainly Haaretz and TheMarker), so a "Blindspot for the left" there often just means they haven't published yet. Some outlets (Maariv and Israel Hayom, for example) block requests from our servers and are not on the wire for now.

Story grouping is automatic and sometimes wrong — which affects the spectrum too.

Think a rating is wrong? Write to us with sources and we'll review it: kiril.u@gmail.com.