How to filter news by the political bias of the source#

To return news from sources of a specific political lean, add the source.bias parameter with one of three values — left, center or right. For example, source.bias=center returns only articles published by center-leaning sources.

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything?source.bias=center&api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

You can send the key as a header (X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY) instead of the api_key query parameter. If you omit source.bias, no bias filter is applied and articles from sources of any lean are returned.

What is the source.bias parameter?#

source.bias filters articles by the political lean assigned to the publishing source. It accepts exactly three values — left, center and right — and the value is case-insensitive, so LEFT and left behave the same. Filtering by source.bias only matches sources that have an assigned lean; sources with no bias classification are not included in a bias-filtered request.

The same three values work in the reverse direction through ignore.source.bias, which excludes a lean instead of requiring it. Both parameters are documented in the official News API parameters reference.

How to filter for a single political lean#

Pass one value to keep results from a single lean. This request returns only articles from left-leaning sources:

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything?source.bias=left&api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

Every article in the response carries a source object that includes a bias field, so you can confirm the lean of each result you receive.

How to combine multiple biases in one request#

Separate values with commas to match articles from any of the listed leans (OR logic). This pulls center and right-leaning coverage in a single call:

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything?source.bias=center,right&api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

The maximum is three values per request. Since there are only three possible leans, source.bias=left,center,right is the same as applying no bias filter at all — it matches every classified source.

How to exclude a bias with ignore.source.bias#

To keep everything except a certain lean, use ignore.source.bias. It follows the same rules — comma-separated, up to three values. This excludes left-leaning sources while returning center and right coverage:

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything?ignore.source.bias=left&api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

source.bias combines with any other filter. A common pattern is to read recent center-leaning coverage in one language, newest first:

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything?source.bias=center&language.code=en&sort.by=published_at&sort.order=desc&api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

For language filtering, see How to filter news by language; to bound the time window, see How to filter news by date range.

Which endpoints support source.bias?#

source.bias is part of the shared source filter chain, so it works on the main search and retrieval endpoints, including /v1/news/everything, /v1/news/top-headlines and /v1/news/count. Each of these accepts the parameter on both GET (query string) and POST (request body) requests.

Common Questions#

• Which bias values does source.bias accept?
• How many biases can I request at once?
• What happens if I pass an invalid bias value?
• Does source.bias work together with other filters?

Which bias values does source.bias accept?#

source.bias accepts three values: left, center and right. These are the only recognized leans — there is no separate “unbiased” or “neutral” value. The same three apply to ignore.source.bias.

How many biases can I request at once?#

Up to three per request, in both source.bias and ignore.source.bias. Because there are only three leans in total, listing all three is equivalent to not filtering by bias.

What happens if I pass an invalid bias value?#

An unrecognized value, such as source.bias=neutral, is silently dropped rather than returning an error. If every value you pass is unrecognized, no bias filter is applied and the request returns articles from sources of any lean — so check spelling carefully, because a typo quietly widens your results instead of failing.

Does source.bias work together with other filters?#

Yes. source.bias runs in the same filter chain as language, date, source domain, category and sentiment filters, so you can stack it freely. For example, you can combine source.bias with language.code and sort.by to read the newest center-leaning English coverage in a single request.