It's really not that interesting and I don't remember exactly. It's just a penalty that means the post has to get moderately more upvotes (maybe 30%? I'm not sure because that code is a bit rube-goldbergery) to rise to the same level vis-a-vis an unpenalized site.
For sites in this category (i.e. not banned, but downweighted) we don't distinguish between political sites, major media sites, sensational bloggy sites and so on. They're all in the same bucket.