The best and worst news stories on the Migrant Caravan
In the last 30 days, there have been at least 1500 news articles written on the migrant caravan across 350+ news sites. In case you’ve been living under a rock, the short version is that 1000–7000 people from Central America are walking through Mexico to get to the US border in the hopes of being admitted as asylum seekers.
With so many articles how does one decide which article to read?
One way to decide is to select the best-rated article by OwlFactor. Let’s search in the OwlFactor News Evaluator app and see what comes up (as of 9am EST, 11/5).
The Best
With an OwlFactor of 88, The New York Times’ Debunking 5 Viral Images of the Migrant Caravan gets top billing. The diversity of sources in their article, from outlets across the political spectrum, and the generally neutral tone of the article boosts the score and helps counter the generally left-leaning tendency of NY Times.
With an OwlFactor of 79, Reason’s Migrant Caravan Hysteria Returns gets top billing for right-leaning outlets. The article may receive an even higher score once its author has more articles rated by OwlFactor. However, it crosses the 75 threshold for OwlFactor which indicates a high-quality article.
An example of a medium-quality score article is The Washington Examiner’s Media insist migrant caravan poses no threat. Author Eddie Scary has written on this topic before so his expertise rating boosts the article’s score to 67 but the article is lacking in analysis and hence doesn’t score very highly.
The worst
There are dozens of articles with scores below 25, which is OwlFactor’s threshold for articles that may have some valid information. One example comes from Infowars MS-13 Gang Members Amongst Migrant Caravan which gets an OwlFactor of 12. Author Paul Joseph Watson has not written consistently on this topic so scores poorly for expertise. This combined with a lack of diverse sources and an opinionated tone of writing results in a low score. Hence, this article can be safely avoided.
The alternative to OwlFactor
Just for fun, let’s see what Google News surfaces when you search for “Migrant Caravan” (search executed at 9am EST on 11/5)
Several random stories — hard to know which one is high quality and worth your time. Also, curiously all are from historically left-leaning sites so you may be getting the same viewpoint rehashed.
If you want the best news on any topic, whether related to the elections or not, download OwlFactor.
