As it has become easier and easier to disseminate media — leading to a major uptick in the spread of misinformation — the issues of bias and objectivity have raised questions about whether publications with obvious political leanings are a threat to U.S. democracy. But the politicization of the media is not a new phenomenon. In fact, in even the earliest years of the printed press in the United States, newspapers were explicitly subsidized by different political parties and in turn, published content in line with the views and priorities of those parties. There was no demand for objectivity, neutrality or balance: journalism was inherently partisan.

Today, the issue of bias goes far beyond Republican vs. Democrat, or conservative vs. liberal.

But many readers seem to have a distorted view of what bias really means, labeling any media that simply goes against their own personal opinions or values as “biased”. In one study asking community members about the biases, or lack thereof, of their local media, about 50 percent of respondents claimed their local media was biased. Of this 50 percent, about half claimed their local media was biased against Republicans while the other half claimed their local media was biased against Democrats. Readers are only identifying bias in media that clearly favors the party or political leanings that they don’t identify with themselves.

The synonymization of political leanings with irresponsible bias is a dangerous one, as it fails to recognize serious instances of bias against religions, races, or other groups and classifications of people. The political leanings of different publications, in and of itself, is not inherently a danger to democracy. One Gallup poll found that over eight in 10 Americans feel the media bears “a great deal” (47%) of blame for political division in the United States, but nearly as many Americans feel that the media could also do “a great deal” to improve those political divisions. That same poll found that 81% of Americans feel that news media is “critical” or “very important” to democracy, even with the political bias of different outlets.

The elimination of harmful biases is an important endeavor, but objective journalism is a fantasy. Claiming objectivity in the media allows for the voices of marginalized groups to be silenced and for oppression to be normalized. The way that journalists report can have an incredible impact on their audience and, if they aren’t careful and aware of how they cover certain topics, they risk endangering real people’s safety or livelihoods. Publications can work to heal the divisions of political leaning and biases by ensuring that reporters speak to people with different views from their own when covering contentious topics, hire a diverse newsroom with a variety of represented journalistic and personal backgrounds and cover more stories about public attempts to engage in civil discourse rather than focusing on particularly divisive perspectives.

Understandably, the primary responsibility to publish fair and — within reason — balanced content lies with the authors and editors of publications, but that does not eliminate all responsibility on the reader’s part to read such content with a critical eye and to inform themselves on the leanings, political or otherwise, of the media they choose to consume. This can be a daunting and confusing task — especially when so many publications claim to be the sole torchbearers of truth and fact — but there are certainly ways to evaluate the quality and aims of major media sources.

Ad Fontes Media is a company that evaluates U.S. news sources for bias, news value and relatability and has created the comprehensive “Media Bias Chart. This chart plots the publications as data points on the horizontal axis, which measures political bias from extreme left to extreme right and on the vertical axis, which measures news value and relatability, or essentially how factual their published information is and whether their content is influenced by opinion or is simply straightforward reporting.

My favorite thing about this chart is that it doesn’t identify any “winners”. It might be easy to look at the chart and declare that the winners are Associated Press or Reuters because they fall at the top of the news and reliability scale and at the center of the political bias scale. But in reality, the best publications are going to vary greatly from person to person based on the type of media they want to consume. If a student is looking for reliable news sources to corroborate claims in a paper they write for a class, sources like AP and Reuters would be a great choice because of their minimal political leaning and their dedication to simply reporting the facts. However, if a public citizen with left-leaning political views is looking for more information about a recent government policy and also wants to read an opinion or analysis of that decision, they might go to a publication like Vox or HuffPost.

Using resources like the Media Bias Chart has been one of the best ways to inform our decision-making about the media we consume. It takes effort to be conscientious about the publications we read and the content that we search for, especially in an age where computer algorithms play a huge role in cultivating our selection of news. If you haven’t previously spent time reflecting on the media you engage with, you will likely have to “re-train” not only yourself but your search engines and social media to show you content that is better aligned with your preferences and priorities.