You’ve probably seen their ads. Or maybe you stumbled across a video of an anchor promising "unbiased" reporting while looking directly into your soul. Straight Arrow News (SAN) has made a massive branding push lately. Naturally, when most of us want to know if a news outlet is legit or just another partisan mouthpiece, we head to one place: Wikipedia. But if you go looking for a straight arrow news wikipedia page, you might notice something kind of weird. Either the page is surprisingly thin, or it's locked in a constant state of "this article is being considered for deletion."
It’s frustrating. We live in an era where "fake news" is a buzzword thrown around so often it has basically lost all meaning. You want to know who owns them. You want to know if they have a "slant." You want to know if they are actually, you know, a real news organization with a physical office and a payroll, or just three guys in a basement with a high-end ring light and a green screen.
The Mystery of the Straight Arrow News Wikipedia Entry
Wikipedia is a battlefield. Honestly, people don't realize how much drama happens behind the scenes of a simple encyclopedic entry. For a digital news startup like Straight Arrow News, getting—and keeping—a Wikipedia page is a badge of "notability." But Wikipedia editors are notoriously prickly about new media companies. They look for "significant coverage in reliable, independent sources."
Here’s the kicker: if the only people talking about you are your own press releases or other small blogs, Wikipedia editors will nukes your page faster than you can say "editorial independence." This is why searching for straight arrow news wikipedia often feels like a game of digital whack-a-mole. You might find a stub. You might find a redirect. Or you might find a talk page where editors are arguing about whether the company is "notable" enough to deserve an entry at all.
This isn't necessarily a conspiracy. It’s just how the wiki-sausage gets made. For a company founded in 2020/2021, they haven't had decades to rack up the kind of legacy citations that the New York Times or AP have.
Who is Actually Behind Straight Arrow News?
Forget the wiki for a second. Let's talk about the money and the muscle. Straight Arrow News is a subsidiary of Eagle Media. The big name you need to know is Joe Ricketts. If that name sounds familiar, it should. He’s the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade and the patriarch of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs.
Ricketts didn't just wake up one day and decide he wanted to be a media mogul. Well, actually, maybe he did. But his stated goal was to fill a gap he saw in the market: news that isn't yelling at you. He hired Chris Hooten as CEO, a guy with a background in data and strategy. They set up shop in Omaha, Nebraska. Yes, Omaha. Not New York. Not D.C. That's a deliberate choice meant to signal "middle of the country" values, though they have a significant presence in the capital as well.
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The "Media Bias Chart" Obsession
If you go to their site, they practically scream about their ratings from Ad Fontes Media and AllSides. These are third-party organizations that map out where news outlets sit on the political spectrum.
- Ad Fontes usually places them near the "Middle" or "Balanced" section.
- AllSides has previously given them a "Center" rating.
Is that enough to trust them? Maybe. But remember that "Center" can sometimes mean "we give five minutes to the left and five minutes to the right," which isn't always the same thing as objective truth. Sometimes one side is just objectively wrong about a fact, and "balancing" it can actually be a form of bias in itself. It's called "false equivalence," and it's the tightrope SAN walks every single day.
The Content: What Are They Actually Reporting?
They don't do much "breaking news" in the sense of being the first on the scene of a fire in Topeka. They are more of a "digest and analyze" outfit. They take the big stories of the day—inflation, border security, international conflicts—and try to strip away the "spin" you’d get from CNN or Fox News.
They have a few flagship segments. "Media Missed" is one of their most popular. The premise is simple: they highlight stories that the "Mainstream Media" (MSM) is ignoring because it doesn't fit a certain narrative. It’s a clever hook. It appeals to the growing demographic of people who feel like they are being lied to by omission.
But here’s a nuance most people miss. By focusing on what others aren't reporting, you are still creating a curated narrative. You're just defining yourself by what you aren't, rather than what you are. It’s a reactive form of journalism.
Why the "Wikipedia Crowd" is Skeptical
When you look at the straight arrow news wikipedia discussions, the skepticism usually boils down to the "Billionaire Factor." Joe Ricketts is a known conservative donor. Naturally, critics wonder if a news outlet funded by a major GOP donor can ever truly be "Straight."
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To their credit, SAN seems to have a "hands-off" policy. There haven't been any major internal whistleblowers claiming Ricketts is calling the newsroom to kill stories. In fact, they’ve hired journalists from across the spectrum. But in the world of Wikipedia sourcing, "potential for bias" is a hot topic that keeps their page under a microscope.
Another issue? Impact. To be "notable" on Wikipedia, you usually need to have broken a story that changed the national conversation. SAN is still in its "growth phase." They are building an audience, but they haven't had their "Watergate" moment yet. Until they do, they remain in that weird limbo of being a legitimate business that Wikipedia editors treat like a startup.
Is Straight Arrow News Actually Centrist?
"Centrism" is a slippery fish. If you ask a hardcore leftist, SAN looks like a conservative outlet because they cover things like "border integrity" without a heavy progressive lean. If you ask a MAGA devotee, they look like "RINO" media because they don't ignore the legal troubles of Donald Trump.
They use a tool called the "Bias Meter" on their videos. It’s a literal graphic that pops up to show the lean of the sources they are quoting. It’s a bit gimmicky, honestly. But it’s a visual representation of their mission statement. They are trying to show their work.
Does it work?
For a lot of people, yes. Their YouTube channel has seen significant growth. Their app is clean. They avoid the "pundit panels" where four people scream over each other in tiny boxes. That alone makes them feel more "centered" than 90% of cable news.
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Practical Steps for the Savvy News Consumer
If you’re researching straight arrow news wikipedia because you want to know if you should trust them, don't rely on a single Wiki entry. It's too easy for those pages to be manipulated by PR firms or angry internet trolls.
Instead, do your own "audit" of their work.
- Check the "About" page, then verify it. They claim to be independent. Check who their board members are. Look at their LinkedIn. See where their reporters worked before. Many came from local news, which is generally less "spin-heavy" than national news.
- Compare three stories. Take a hot-button issue. Read the SAN version. Then read the Breitbart version and the Mother Jones version. See what facts SAN included that the others left out—and vice versa.
- Look for the "Why." Every news story has a "why." Why are they telling me this now? If the answer is "to make me angry at a specific group of people," it’s not straight news. SAN generally avoids the "outage porn" style of journalism, which is a point in their favor.
- Monitor the Wikipedia Talk Page. If you really want the tea, don't just read the Wikipedia article. Click the "Talk" tab at the top. That’s where the real debate happens. You’ll see people arguing about their funding, their reach, and their accuracy. It’s a masterclass in media literacy.
The Final Word on the Wiki Situation
The lack of a robust, permanent straight arrow news wikipedia page isn't necessarily a sign that the company is "fake." It's more of a reflection of how high the bar is for new media entities in a skeptical age. As they continue to hire more veteran journalists and break more original stories, the "notability" problem will likely solve itself.
In the meantime, they remain an interesting experiment in the American media landscape. Can a billionaire-funded, Omaha-based, centrist-seeking news outlet survive in a world that rewards polarization? Maybe. But you won't find the definitive answer on a Wikipedia page—you'll find it by watching their coverage and seeing if they actually keep their arrows straight when the political winds start blowing.
Next Steps for Verification:
Check the Ad Fontes Interactive Media Bias Chart and search for "Straight Arrow News." Compare their "Reliability" score against their "Bias" score. Then, visit the AllSides website and look for their community blind bias tests for SAN. These two data points, combined with a glance at the Wikipedia "Talk" page, will give you a much more complete picture than any single article ever could.