In this project it was chosen to measure news neutrality in the UK specifically, to narrow down the field of research. The UK has a, mainly, two-party system where parliament is dominated by the Labour and Conservative party. This could be seen as converting research on political neutrality to binary values, which makes it sufficiently easier.
An extra advantage of the UK as a country of research is the fact that the country has a state-owned news source, the BBC. Findings on neutrality could be remarkably more interesting taking this into account, since one would expect a public service company to be especially truthful and impartial.
Previously done research in the domain of news neutrality gives a baseline to which results can be compared to. In a survey by YouGov2 in 2017, 2040 people were asked to label newspapers based on how left or rightwing they appear them to be. Some of these newspapers coincide with the ones in our research.
A look into this data, gives a first impression on how left- or right-wing certain papers appear to be.
Is there a reason for the fact that The Guardian has a left-wing reputation? Can we draw a line on which newspapers have similar ideologies? Is the media as biased as people might think it is?
“Daily mail and Daily Express keep up a right-wing reputation, The Guardian and The Mirror leave left-wing impressions.”