The Bald Spot is thrilled to announce that, for the seventh year in a row, it has ranked as one of the top five major news networks for reliability, this year managing to cut in front of Fox News for fourth place. This recent award confirms a 2020 poll that ranked The Bald Spot as “more likely to tell readers the truth” than Fox News. That poll also revealed that many individual The Bald Spot columnists are considered to be more trustworthy sources than Fox News anchors Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo. 

This raises questions about the future of many The Bald Spot journalists and whether the so-called “Bald Spot to Fox News” pipeline is in the best interests of The Bald Spot in terms of maintaining credibility. This pipeline refers to the longstanding tradition of The Bald Spot contributors graduating and joining Fox News in senior roles due to similarities in how news is analyzed. It is often thought that this pipeline has helped The Bald Spot to recruit better contributors by showing them a future career in news as reliable as The Bald Spot. After all, many students worry that writing for The Bald Spot will cause them to be accustomed to an editorial standard for truth that might be rarer in larger networks. However, this study suggests that Fox News’ standards are not as high as those of The Bald Spot, a factor that is important for students to consider as they think about their post-graduation options.

These findings came as a shock to many students. “I mean, I never realized our news was on par with Fox’s, let alone better,” said one frequent contributor. “I had always dreamed of my articles in The Bald Spot jump-starting my career in journalism, but I never thought they would be seen as an asset for Fox News.” This student was told in their Fox News interview that their standards for establishing veracity were perhaps higher than they needed to be.

“When we see that new hires have written for The Bald Spot, we immediately know that their fact and source checking standards are as high, and often even higher, than our own. They always arrive ready to go,” said a spokesperson for Fox News. “While we are obviously disappointed by these new rankings, we would like to congratulate The Bald Spot on their accomplishments. Here at Fox News, we always strive for the truth, but it seems The Bald Spot found it first.”

However, as The Bald Spot rankings keep going up, it is important to keep in mind that increasing viewership of Newsmax may threaten The Bald Spot’s ranking. Newsmax is becoming more widely seen as reliable, and it is likely to overtake Fox News next year. However, The Bald Spot remains certain that its reliability will, in the end, prevail.

The Carletonian, a rival newspaper at Carleton College that ranked just below Fox News and The Bald Spot, declined to comment.