It's a shitty, misleading tool.

There's a huge ideological difference between saying "capitalism is good, it just needs some fixes and regulations and the government should provide certain things like healthcare, also discrimination is bad" and "capitalism is evil, seize the means of production!"... the former is liberal, the latter is leftist/socialist.

Vox Media is super duper liberal. They have a bunch of channels solely dedicated to reviewing consumer goods and praising companies for making them. If they were (hardcore) leftist, they'd be bashing the companies for (allegedly) exploiting workers while repeating the mantra "There is no ethical consumption under capitalism."

That’s why it’s important to read about the rating instead of just looking at only the rating itself.

What I'm reading between the lines there is "our rating used to be 'Lean Left', then a bunch of people complained that Vox never takes Trump's side and always bashes him, so we caved in and turned it into a 'Left' rating so we won't have to deal with all these angry complaints anymore."

That's the Overton window shift in action. Trump is a very right-wing president. No shit a liberal media outlet won't take his side. That doesn't suddenly mean Vox is extremely left-wing. Objectively speaking, Vox is still much more centrist/moderate compared to the President.

I used to find it funny how TV hosts like Glenn Beck would throw around terms like "socialism", demonizing even the most basic anti-poverty measures. Then Trump took that kind of rhetoric to another level and popularized it. And now the masses are actually absorbing it, and redditors upvote stupid statements like "Vox is EXTREMELY hardcore left-leaning". It's brain-numbing.