Which left-leaning media outlets have the largest online following?

1. What the reports actually claim — a muddled consensus on who’s biggest

Across the provided analyses, CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, NPR, HuffPost, Daily Kos, and Democracy Now! appear repeatedly as large left-leaning or widely used outlets, though not all sources label each outlet as “left-leaning” uniformly. One analysis lists CNN, NPR, MSNBC and The New York Times as significant sources for liberals specifically, citing survey use patterns ^[4]. Another lists CNN, Huffington Post, and The New York Times with explicit unique-visitor counts—144.2M, 125.5M, and 100.4M respectively—while ranking Politico, Slate and Daily Kos further down ^[1]. Other texts mix in PBS, BBC, NBC and ABC as popular among left-leaning or Democratic audiences without providing consistent audience metrics ^{[2] [5]}.

2. Conflicting metrics: visits, followers, circulation — the same question, three different yardsticks

The datasets conflate unique monthly visitors, social media followers, and print circulation, producing incompatible rankings. One source provides numeric web-traffic estimates for top liberal sites, placing CNN, HuffPost, and NYT at the top by unique visitors ^[1]. Another highlights Facebook follower counts for outlets like CNN (41.5M) and MSNBC (3.9M), and cites HuffPost’s Facebook reach, which skews comparison toward social platforms rather than site traffic ^[6]. A third source cites circulation for niche left publications such as The Nation and Utne Reader—useful for legacy print footprint but not indicative of online reach ^[3]. These metric differences mean an outlet can lead in one ranking and fall in another; no single metric here consistently measures “largest online following.” ^{[1] [6] [3]}

3. Repeated names and notable absences — who shows up and who doesn’t

Across the analyses, CNN, New York Times, HuffPost, Daily Kos, Democracy Now!, MSNBC, and NPR are the most consistently mentioned, indicating broad recognition of their digital footprints ^{[4] [1] [6]}. Some lists include public broadcasters (PBS, BBC) and mainstream networks (NBC, ABC) as top sources consumed by Democrats—these references emphasize audience use and trust rather than explicit left bias ^{[2] [5]}. Several analyses omit newer or niche progressive outlets that claim engaged online communities—Salon, AlterNet, and Jacobin appear only sporadically—suggesting selection bias in which sources or metrics each analyst prioritized ^{[6] [3]}.

4. Dates, credibility and transparency gaps — why recency matters here

The analyses vary in date transparency and methodological clarity. One item provides a clear publication date tied to survey patterns (April 2024) and references Pew-like consumption patterns ^[4], while another lists a June 2025 date for a usage/trust snapshot ^[5]. Several entries lack publication dates or show null timestamps, undermining confidence in their currency ^{[3] [2] [6]}. When audience measurements shift rapidly—as with social platforms and web traffic—undated or method-opaque claims can mislead, producing lists that may reflect past standings rather than current market share ^{[1] [6]}.

5. Underlying agendas and selection effects — what the lists emphasize and what they ignore

The assembled sources each reveal implicit choices: some prioritize mainstream national outlets with cross-spectrum reach (CNN, NYT), others highlight progressive digital natives and alternative weeklies (Daily Kos, The Nation) or metric-driven marketing lists that favor raw traffic ^{[1] [3] [6]}. These choices reflect distinct agendas—audience-capture for advertisers, ideological curation, or survey-based trust analysis—and produce different rankings depending on the intended use-case. No single analysis here is neutral about the question of “largest”, because the definition of “largest” shifts to fit editorial or commercial aims ^{[2] [6]}.

6. Bottom line and next steps — how to get a definitive answer

To produce a definitive, comparable ranking of left-leaning outlets by online following, assemble harmonized metrics: current unique monthly visitors (same analytics provider), platform-specific social followers (normalized), and engagement measures (time-on-site, shares). From these analyses, the best candidates to appear at the top after such harmonization are CNN, The New York Times, HuffPost, MSNBC, NPR, Daily Kos, and Democracy Now!, but that conclusion depends on whether the goal weights reach, engagement, or partisan audience share ^{[1] [4] [6]}. A recommended next step is to request a single, dated dataset with explicit metric definitions so rankings can be compared apples-to-apples rather than conflated across different measurement systems ^{[1] [5]}.