How Pano works

Media bias isn't new, and it isn't always a bad thing. The problem is not knowing where it sits. So we start by mapping it: we read 139 news sources, from CNN to Fox News, and place each one by its political lean and its factual reliability.

We don't make up these ratings. Each source's lean and reliability are a composite of three independent media watchdogs, Ad Fontes, AllSides and Media Bias/Fact Check, which audit and survey the press continually.

Pano has no reporters. Four times a day, around 7am, noon, 5pm and 9pm ET, we collect the newest articles from every source and group the ones covering the same event into a story. Then we count its coverage by the lean of each source.

That count gives every story its label. When 60% or more of its articles come from one side, it's Mostly Left, Mostly Right or Mostly Center. When one side makes up 20% or less, the label names the two that carried it: Left & Center, Center & Right, or Polarized when the center sat it out. Anything else is Balanced.

On the homepage, Top ranks the day's stories by how much coverage they drew from across the spectrum, and the Left and Right tabs show what each side is covering most.

Every story is written the same way. AI reads a sample of the story's articles from across the spectrum and writes two parts:

• What happened: the facts. Only sources rated reliable enough to state facts contribute here; the lowest-rated sources never do.
• How each side covered it: what left-leaning and right-leaning outlets chose to emphasize, naming the outlets and linking to their articles. When one side didn't cover a story, we say so rather than fill the gap.

Under that come the Headlines: how outlets on each side headlined the same story, in their own words, linked to the originals. Every claim on the page leads back to real articles, so you can check our work.

Big stories don't end in a day. We write each day's coverage as its own story, a chapter, so every page tells you what happened that day. Then we match each new story against recent ones, and when it's the next chapter of something ongoing, it joins that storyline.

A storyline puts the chapters together: how its coverage rose and fell day by day, which side drove it, and every chapter in order. The story above is Day 85 of Russia-Ukraine War, the biggest storyline of the past week:

A story that belongs to a storyline says so above its headline (“Day 8 · U.S.-China Trade Talks”), with the previous and next chapters at its foot. The Storylines page ranks the biggest ones over the past week, month or three months.

A lot of media companies talk about independence, but we believe actions speak much louder than words. To keep our incentives aligned with your trust, we operate under a strict set of rules:

• We don't run ads. We answer to you, not advertisers looking for clicks.
• We don't sell your data. Your reading habits are your business, no one else's.
• We don't partner with partisan interest groups. We have no political agendas to push.

Instead, Pano is funded entirely by our readers through donations. We believe the best way to stay accountable is a direct, unfiltered relationship with the people who read us.

We're always working to make Pano better, and your feedback is a big part of how. If something ever feels off, if you have an idea, or if there's a feature you'd love to see, please let us know. Feel free to drop us a line anytime.