themildtake

resources

Sources we lean on

The assessments are only as good as their inputs. These are the external references behind the scores and the analysis.

The triangulation rule. No single source - and no single language - gates a score. We triangulate across multilateral indices and independent press in multiple languages, then read across slants. Bias/coverage tools like Ground News are useful but skew English / North-American, so they are one lens, not the standard. See the methodology.
Government-controlled is out - uniformly. Data from a state-controlled outlet reporting on its own state is excluded, for adversaries and allies alike. That includes Western state broadcasters (VOA, Radio Free Asia are US-government-funded) on the US, not only CCP/Kremlin/Iranian state media. Ownership tilt (Gulf-owned pan-Arab, oligarch-owned) is a slant to flag, not an automatic exclusion. When exclusion strips a factor, rebuild from independent proxies or mark it insufficient-reliable-data.
Ground News ↗ Bias & coverage check

A quick way to see how a story splits across the political spectrum and to check an outlet's bias/factuality. One input among many - triangulate against the multilateral indices and the independent press below rather than treating any single aggregator as the gate.

V-Dem ↗ Democracy data

Varieties of Democracy - Gothenburg-based, with a global network of multilingual country experts. The backbone reference for rule-of-law, civil-liberties, and institutional trajectory scoring.

World Justice Project ↗ Rule of law

Rule of Law Index - survey-based, cross-national, independent of any single government. Anchors the institutional category.

Reporters Without Borders ↗ Press freedom

RSF (Paris) - World Press Freedom Index, French/global. Anchors press-freedom scoring and helps rate whether a country's own media can be trusted on itself.

Transparency International ↗ Corruption

Corruption Perceptions Index (Berlin-HQ, global chapters). Cross-checks institutional capture and the integrity dimension.

IMF ↗ Independent macro

Article IV staff reports and COFER reserve data - independent of the country being assessed, the cleanest way around state-self-reported fiscal/growth figures.

Bellingcat ↗ Open-source investigation

Amsterdam-based open-source (OSINT) collective - geolocation, flight/ship tracking, satellite and social-media verification. Independent, methods-transparent, and language-agnostic: the gold standard for verifying conflict, sanctions-evasion, and state-violence claims from primary evidence rather than any outlet's framing.

OCCRP ↗ Cross-border investigative

Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project - a multilingual network of local investigative outlets across regions; built to defeat single-country/single-language blind spots. The network behind much cross-border corruption and state-capture reporting.

ICIJ ↗ Cross-border investigative

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists - the network behind the Panama and Pandora Papers; pools 100+ outlets across languages and borders to expose offshore finance, corruption, and elite capture.

Integrity Index ↗ Congressional integrity

Integrity grades for every member of Congress and 2026 candidate, built from FEC filings, STOCK Act trades, PAC money, lobbying ties, and conflict-of-interest signals. No public API.

FiveThirtyEight data ↗ Open datasets

The data and code behind FiveThirtyEight's articles (CC-BY-4.0). We watch the repository's commit feed to know when an underlying dataset has changed.

Snopes ↗ Fact-check

Long-running fact-checking reference for rumors, viral claims, and misinformation - a quick gut-check before a claim is treated as fact.

Independent sources by language

Anchor each country in the language of the place plus a neighbor's or rival's language, plus a multilateral index, so no single market's press frames the read. Listed sources are independent; tilt means usable but flag the ownership slant; excluded is state-controlled and out for its own country.

English US, UK, global wires - strongest for markets/macro; watch US ownership capture

US media ownership has concentrated toward administration-aligned owners in the last year (e.g. CBS/Paramount via the Skydance-Ellison acquisition, with board/editorial appointees close to the administration). Treat such captured US outlets as ownership-tilted (partially-entangled) on US politics, not neutral - lean on the global wires and non-Anglophone press instead.

  • Reuters (London, wire)
  • Associated Press (NYC, wire)
  • The Guardian (London)
  • BBC (London, public, arm's-length)
  • The Economist (London)
  • CBS / Paramount (US, Skydance-Ellison-owned, administration-aligned)
  • most US cable/network news (concentrated ownership - flag the proprietor's tilt)
  • VOA / Radio Free Asia / RFE-RL (US-government-funded - out on the US under the uniform rule)
Spanish Mexico, Latin America, Spain
  • Animal Político (Mexico City)
  • Aristegui Noticias (Mexico City)
  • Proceso (Mexico City)
  • El Faro (El Salvador → relocated to Costa Rica 2023)
  • Ojo Público (Lima)
  • elDiario.es (Madrid)
  • CONNECTAS (Bogotá hub)
  • TeleSUR (VE state)
  • Granma / Prensa Latina (CU state)
Arabic MENA, Gulf, Iran-adjacent
  • Mada Masr (Cairo, often blocked)
  • Daraj (Beirut)
  • Nawaat (Tunis)
  • Inkyfada (Tunis)
  • ARIJ network (Amman)
  • Al Jazeera (Doha, Qatari-owned)
  • Asharq / Al Arabiya (Dubai/Riyadh, Saudi-owned)
  • SANA (SY state)
  • IRNA / Press TV (IR state)
  • SPA (SA state)
  • Al-Ahram (EG state)
Mandarin / Chinese China - no neutral Mandarin-first free press exists (see note)

Mainland media is state-controlled; Hong Kong's free press was dismantled after the 2020 National Security Law (Apple Daily, Stand News gone). Taiwan is the ONLY Mandarin-first free press - but it is existentially threatened by Beijing, so on China specifically it carries an anti-CCP slant. Net: for China, lean on diaspora/exile Mandarin + Japanese/Korean coverage + partner customs data + multilateral indices, not Mandarin media alone.

  • Initium Media 端傳媒 (founded HK → Singapore, exile)
  • China Digital Times (Berkeley, US - diaspora)
  • Taiwan press - CommonWealth 天下, CNA, UDN (Taipei): free, but anti-CCP slant ON CHINA
  • Caixin 財新 (Beijing): best mainland economic, but partially-entangled
  • Xinhua, People's Daily, Global Times, CGTN (CCP state)
  • Hong Kong post-NSL outlets (free press dismantled)
  • RFA & VOA Chinese (US-gov-funded - out under the uniform rule)
Russian Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia - EXILE outlets only (flag émigré/oppositional slant + no on-the-ground access)
  • Meduza (Riga, Latvia)
  • Novaya Gazeta Europe (relocated EU)
  • The Moscow Times (Amsterdam)
  • iStories (relocated EU)
  • Mediazona (distributed/exile)
  • TASS, RT, RIA Novosti, Sputnik (RU state)
Ukrainian Ukraine (flag the natural pro-Ukraine lean)
  • Ukrainska Pravda (Kyiv)
  • Kyiv Independent (Kyiv, English)
  • NV.ua (Kyiv)
  • Hromadske (Kyiv)
French EU, Francophone Africa, Québec
  • Le Monde (Paris)
  • Mediapart (Paris)
  • AFP (Paris, wire)
  • Le Devoir (Montréal, QC)
  • RFI / France 24 (Paris, public, arm's-length)
German EU economy & institutions
  • Der Spiegel (Hamburg)
  • Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich)
  • FAZ (Frankfurt)
  • Deutsche Welle (Bonn, public, arm's-length)
Japanese / Korean China & Asian supply chains (strong independent lens on China)
  • Nikkei Asia (Tokyo)
  • Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo)
  • Hankyoreh (Seoul)
  • Korea Economic Daily (Seoul)
Swedish / Nordic Sweden
  • Dagens Nyheter (Stockholm)
  • SVT / Sveriges Radio (Stockholm, public)
  • The Local Sweden (Stockholm, English)
Portuguese / Hindi Brazil, India, Global South
  • Agência Pública (São Paulo)
  • Folha de S.Paulo (São Paulo)
  • Scroll.in (Mumbai)
  • The Wire (New Delhi)

The cross-border investigative networks above (Bellingcat, OCCRP, ICIJ) publish multilingually and are built to defeat single-country and single-language blind spots - Bellingcat especially, since it verifies from primary evidence (satellite, geolocation, flight/ship data) rather than any outlet's framing.

What's changed lately

A best-effort snapshot of each source's feed, captured at build. Useful for spotting when an underlying dataset or a relevant fact-check has moved.

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