Methodology

Why not left and right

Ground News sorts outlets on a left–centre–right axis. In the Near East that axis is close to meaningless: it does not separate a Gulf state broadcaster from a pan-Arab satellite channel from an Iraqi independent, and it imports an American frame onto a region that does not use it.

NEN sorts on three orthogonal dimensions, all surfaced in the interface: alignment, ownership, and distance.

How outlets are grouped

Every outlet we track publishes its ownership structure, funding source, and correction record. The alignment grouping is reviewed quarterly by an external panel.

Alignment colours are assigned arbitrarily and carry no national or political symbolism.

What counts as a blindspot

A blindspot is a story that one alignment bloc is covering heavily while another bloc, tracked in similar numbers, has published on it rarely or not at all. Legends always show absolute outlet counts, never percentages — a count is checkable, a percentage on its own is not.

Analytics and privacy

Traffic events store path, optional story slug, optional source, region, referrer host, and a coarse device class. We do not store IP addresses, cookies that identify a person, or raw user-agent strings. Bot-classified events are dropped. Events are retained for 90 days for aggregate reporting.

Source click-out rate is click-outs for that source divided by pageviews in the same date range.