For the best experience, view analytics on a laptop or desktop.

Source DNA

Political fingerprint of news sources over time

Analyze the political patterns of different news sources. See how many left-leaning, neutral, and right-leaning articles each source publishes. The DNA strand visualizes daily patterns - blue for left-leaning days, red for right-leaning days.

How to Interpret Source DNA

DNA Strand Visualization

Each vertical bar represents a day. The top half shows left-lean intensity (blue), the bottom half shows right-lean intensity (red). Darker colors indicate stronger lean on that day.

Article Counts

Numbers show total articles classified as left-leaning, neutral, or right-leaning. This measures article content, not the newspaper's editorial stance.

Categories Analyzed

Political lean is calculated only from Politics, Business, and Social category articles - categories where political framing is most relevant.

Important Note

This analysis measures the political lean of individual articles, not the newspaper's official position. A source may publish articles across the spectrum.

Methodology: Political Lean Classification

Classification Model

Articles are classified using a multi-factor model analyzing: entity framing (how politicians/parties are described), policy stance indicators, loaded language patterns, and source attribution choices. The model outputs a -10 to +10 lean score.

Training & Validation

The classifier was trained on 100,000+ labeled Indian news articles with human-validated political lean annotations. We achieve 78% agreement with expert annotators on a 3-class (left/center/right) classification task.

Research basis: Our political lean detection draws on media bias research (Groseclose & Milyo, 2005; Gentzkow & Shapiro, 2010) and recent NLP approaches (Baly et al., 2018, 2020) for automated political stance detection.

How Source DNA Works

Source DNA analyzes thousands of articles from each Indian news source to create a unique political fingerprint. Our AI examines word choice, entity coverage, topic selection, and framing patterns to determine where each source falls on the left-center-right political spectrum.

Political Lean Score

Each source receives a score from -10 (strongly left-leaning) to +10 (strongly right-leaning). This is based on actual coverage analysis, not reputation. Scores update daily as new articles are analyzed.

Coverage Fingerprint

Beyond political lean, we visualize each source's DNA across category preferences, sentiment patterns, and topic emphasis. Two sources with the same political lean can have very different coverage fingerprints.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you determine if a news channel is left or right wing?

We analyze thousands of articles for political framing, entity coverage patterns, topic selection, and sentiment toward political figures. A score of -10 to +10 indicates left to right lean. The analysis is based on actual coverage, not reputation.

Is NDTV left-wing or neutral?

Our AI analysis of NDTV's coverage patterns shows its political lean based on actual reporting. Check the Source DNA tool for current data - political lean can change over time based on coverage patterns and editorial decisions.

What does the Source DNA fingerprint show?

The fingerprint visualizes a source's coverage patterns across dimensions: political lean, category preferences (politics vs sports vs business), sentiment patterns, and coverage consistency. It's like a unique signature of how each source reports news.