Outlet profile

Straight Arrow News

U.S. center (self-described unbiased; rated Center by AllSides and Least Biased by Media Bias/Fact Check)

Owned byPrivately held. Straight Arrow News LLC is a Delaware company based in Omaha, Nebraska, launched in 2021 by billionaire Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade. Check the outlet's About page for current ownership details, because this profile did not independently verify them.

FundingMainly advertising and sponsorships. It also relies on private backing from its founder, a wealthy investor. Its content is free to read and not paywalled.

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

Straight Arrow News launched in 2021 from Omaha with funding from Joe Ricketts, who founded TD Ameritrade. Ricketts has a long record of political giving to Republicans and earlier owned the local news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist, which he shut down in 2017. SAN's pitch is to strip opinion and loaded language from news and to show readers how left- and right-leaning outlets frame the same story. It does this through features such as its Bias Breakdown show and side-by-side coverage comparisons. Justin B. Smith, a former Bloomberg Media executive, has served as its chief executive. Several raters score it near the middle. AllSides gave it a Center rating (0.12 in a May 2026 audit) and a Balance Certification for the third year running. Media Bias/Fact Check rates it Least Biased with Mostly Factual reporting, Ad Fontes Media places it in the middle, and NewsGuard gives it 100/100. Those ratings measure its coverage, not its funding, and its owner's political leanings have drawn some scrutiny. Its recent coverage of Trump administration actions has been mostly factual reporting, without a clear tilt toward or against the administration.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-10-19; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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