Citizen is a popular newspaper in South Africa, published from and headquartered in South Africa. In this article, Mediabuzz is going to analyze Citizen’s media bias and Citizen’s factual reporting on the basis of its coverage, language used, presidential endorsements, media reports, research and blind surveys. We have also commented on the left or right biasedness of the Citizen along with its factual accuracy.
Media Bias Analysis Summary
After thorough research, we will conclude whether the Citizenis Left Leaning, Right Leaning or Centred in its approach. For Citizen, we will go through several researches, studies, blind surveys, headline analysis, etc. to comment on Citizen’s media bias. Based on the above analysis, we will assign one of the media bias meter out of all the seven possible meters shown here.
Factual Reporting Summary
For commenting on the factual accuracy of the Citizen, we will flip through previous news articles of the publication and observe if Citizen has published any factually incorrect information. Based on this, we will conclude that we have commented on the factual accuracy of Citizen. Based on the above analysis, we will assign one of the media reliability meter out of all the three possible meters shown here.
A. Citizen Media Bias Analysis
Under this section, we will briefly explain the factors that contribute towards our media bias conclusion for Citizen. We will observe, analyse and comment on the Citizen language used, presidential endorsement, controversies, allegations, political views of Citizen’s editors, etc. to support our inference.
1. Citizen Emotional Influence & Adjectives in Headlines
We will rummage through previous headlines of Citizen to look out for usage of influential language, adjectives, emotionally charged words, etc. that suggests any bias of Citizen towards any side of the spectrum.
2. Citizen Endorsement of President
Endorsement of presidential candidates in elections comments strongly about a newspaper’s affiliation towards left or right. We will look out for candidates that Citizen has endorsed in previous presidential elections to support Citizen’s political bias.
3. Political leader’s Criticism of Citizen
A political leader’s frequent criticism of Citizen will also suggest about political inclination of the newspaper. In this section, we will observe if any political leader has criticised Citizen in the past to support our arguments.
4. Allegations on Citizen
Under this section, we will look out for any previous allegations against Citizen by any political leader, party, organization or readers to support if Citizen is biased towards left, right or center.
5. Media Bias Articles from Research Papers, Institutions, etc.
Several reputed fact checking and media bias analytics organizations conduct thorough surveys and research to write about Citizen media bias. To substantiate our claims about Citizen’s media bias inclination, we will cite these highly reliable sources and research from reputed organizations.
6. Audience of Citizen
The audience of Citizen also strongly suggests its media bias. Therefore, to further substantiate our claims, we will write about Citizen’s audience whether they are democrats or republicans in their political affinities.
7. Citizen’s controversial statements and tweets
Several newspapers make controversial statements or tweets on social media that reflect their affinity towards any ideology. We will flip through Citizen social media accounts to look for clues that suggests Citizen media bias.
8. Popular editors of Citizen
Any popular person or editor associated with the Citizen will also speak a lot about Citizen’s media bias. We will analyze popular persons or editors of Citizen that are directly or indirectly linked to any political party or ideology.
9. Citizen CEO’s political views
In this section, we will look if Citizen CEO supports or sponsors any political party directly or indirectly. We will look for his tweets, statements, opinion pieces, and controversies that will take us towards Citizen’s media bias.
B. Citizen Factual Reporting Analysis
After Citizen media bias, we will write about Citizen’s factual reporting, to check whether Citizen is reliable or not. There are several parameters on which we will be analyzing Citizen’s factual accuracies and will comment if Citizen has ever published any false or misleading reports.
1. Citizen’s misleading or false news articles
We will look for Citizen’s previous history if it has ever intentionally or unintentionally published any fake news, false or misleading reports to influence audience. We will also write about false claims made by Citizen in its Op-Ed or news section.
2. Popular Fact-Checking Organizations’ Analysis of Citizen
Several fact-checking organizations including Politico, FactCheck, Snopes, Poynter, etc. conduct frequent fact-check on news articles published by newspapers. We will list down fact-checks that mentioned Citizen to suggest if Citizen has published false stories in the past or not.
3. Sources of Citizen
Sources quotes by newspapers are also indicative of their reliability. We will check the sources quoted by Citizen in their news stories to find out if Citizen is factually reliable or not.
C. Citizen Reliability Ratings by Fact-Checking Organizations
Several organizations across the globe independently conduct thorough research and studies on the pattern of news coverage by mainstream media. These websites study the articles published by the news media with the help of professionals and rate them on the basis of bias and reliability. Under this section, we will find out what other fact-checking organizations and media monitors have to say about Citizen.
D. History of Citizen
Citizen is based out of South Africa and primarily published from South Africa . In this section, we will comment about the history of Citizen including Citizen founder, Citizen publisher, Citizen circulation and Citizen headquarters.
E. Citizen Funding & Ownership
Under this section, mediabuzz will write about Citizen’s investors, stakeholders and owners to analyze how Citizen’s media bias and factual reliability is affected.
F. Readers of Citizen
Under this section, we will provide you approximate numbers of readers Citizen enjoy. It will also have an age-wise, demographic-wise, gender-wise and political opinion-wise distribution of Citizen audience.
G. Citizen Media Bias and Credibility – Conclusion
After a thorough analysis of Citizen on the above mentioned parameters, we will sum up if Citizen is a left, center or right biased newspaper. Based on the analysis, we will offer a judgement on whether Citizen is a reliable or unreliable publication when factual reporting is concerned.