A summary of my small and very informal survey about media coverage on China (below):
Among clearly mainstream outlets, Bloomberg was the overwhelming favorite. The Guardian also got good support.
Caixin got a decent amount of love, which I think it has earned, but it probably would be a stretch to call it MSM. SCMP is also borderline - highly relevant for the China beat, but overall much more of a regional outlet than a truly global mainstream one.
On the negative side, the BBC, WSJ, and The Economist were the outlets most strongly criticized.
NYT was criticized too, but it also had its defenders too, so the overall picture was mixed there. Same with the FT. Sentiment seemed to learn towards: "it depends on the journalist" which I think is right.
I found it interesting the global wire services - Reuters, AP, AFP - were hardly mentioned at all. Perhaps this is a good thing? After all, if they don't come to mind as being bad OR good, then it suggests they're largely doing what they're supposed to do - providing neutral baseline reporting and leaving interpretation to others.
Also notably, few thought to mention CNBC, CNN, WaPo, either positively or negatively.
As for my own take: I'd go with Bloomberg for best (along with Caixin, although it's outside the MSM category) and The Economist and WSJ tied for worst.
If we expand the definition of "MSM" to include more regional outlets like leading national dailies, smaller-country papers, or second-tier publications, I suspect we'd find a higher signal-to-noise ratio overall. For example, I've generally had positive interview experiences and impressions of coverage from various European outlets, which often seem less locked into the dominant Anglo media framing.
I could perhaps re-do this survey more "properly" with something more shareable (e.g. on SurveyMonkey) to gather more data...if there's interest in that.
In your opinion, which mainstream media have the best ratio to signal to noise on their China coverage? And which ones have the worst?
Notice I'm limiting this to MSM explicitly and intentionally. Might be tempting for some to say "well they all suck", but there's levels to it.