Outlet profile

Courthouse News Service

U.S. center/least biased

Owned byPrivately held by Courthouse News Service Inc.; founded and controlled by editor Bill Girdner

FundingSubscription fees from law firms, media organizations, and legal professionals who pay for its litigation database and news feed

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

Courthouse News Service launched in 1990 in Los Angeles as a niche wire service reporting new civil lawsuits and appellate rulings for lawyers, insurers, and other media outlets, and it is based in Pasadena, California. Its core business model — selling real-time access to newly filed court documents — set it apart from general-interest outlets and pushed it toward a document-driven, just-the-facts reporting style. The outlet gained industry attention for a long-running lawsuit against several California court clerks over delayed public access to newly filed complaints, which it argued violated the First Amendment; it won several of those access cases. It has also occasionally been criticized for opinion pieces from individual columnists that read more subjectively than its news reporting, but its court-case coverage is generally seen as sourced directly from filings and rulings. Media Bias/Fact Check rates it 'Least Biased' with high factual accuracy, while Ad Fontes Media and aggregator Ground News place it slightly to the left of center; Biasly scores it near-dead-center. Because its bread-and-butter coverage is procedural — tracking lawsuits, motions, and judicial opinions, including many involving the Trump administration since January 2025 — its reporting on the administration tends to stick to case facts and outcomes rather than framing that consistently favors or opposes it.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-09-25; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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