Natter

The news. The framing. The bigger picture.

Natter compares how different news outlets cover the same stories, highlighting the facts, differences in emphasis and the narratives shaping what you read.

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How it works

Each morning we line up the stories in three blocks: the UK top five, then up to five world stories that also have UK coverage, then the five stories leading foreign news that we haven’t already listed, and show how a standing panel of outlets framed each one. The scores describe the coverage. They do not pick a winner.

Three sections

UK ranks the day’s top five British stories by prominence across the UK outlets on the panel.

World adds up to five leading international stories that UK outlets also covered. Stories already in the UK block do not appear again under World.

What the world is leading with shows the five stories leading foreign news that day that aren’t already in our UK or World lists. We rank them by how widely they led the foreign outlets on our panel. Alongside World prominence and Neutrality we show UK attention, how much space UK outlets gave each story (10 = prominent, 1 = barely covered).

Each story name in the ranking table jumps to that story lower on the page.

UK prominence

The UK ranking table orders stories by how widely they led the British outlets on the panel. An outlet’s lead story is worth 2 points. A story in that outlet’s top three is worth 1. We add the points across the UK outlets. A high number means the story dominated those front pages.

We order World stories by how widely they led major international coverage, and include them only when UK outlets also reported them.

As with everything on the internet, take everything with a cup of tea and a pinch of salt.

Focus (per outlet, per story, 1 to 10). For each story we read every outlet’s coverage and judge how much of it stays on the verifiable facts of the event (what happened, who, where, when, figures, official statements) versus how much is spent on frames that aren’t key to the story: party-political point-scoring, personalities, ideological framing or speculation. A 10 means the piece is tightly on the event facts, and a 1 means it’s mostly political or personality-driven. Each score comes with a short written reason saying what the piece put first, what it underplayed, and why that earns the score.

Neutrality (per story, across outlets, 1 to 10). Once we’ve read every outlet on our panel for a story, we compare their framing side by side: which facts they lead with, what they leave out, the language they use, and whose view gets top billing. A 10 means near-identical framing across UK and foreign outlets, and a 1 means sharply clashing framing. It’s one score for the whole story, not per outlet.

Outlet Focus averages (the Trends page). This part is simple arithmetic. After each edition we take every published Focus score, average each outlet’s scores within a day, then take the mean of those daily averages, so a day where an outlet appeared in several stories doesn’t outweigh other days. “Latest Focus” is that outlet’s average for the most recent edition.

Reading the scores

Neutrality appears as a heat chip in the ranking table and again under each story. Cool greens are high (good). Hot reds are low (bad). It is not a verdict on which outlet is right.

1–3 4–5 6–7 8–10

Focus uses the same 1–10 heat scale, shown as a pill on each outlet’s line in “How it was framed”, with our Focus reason under the framing comment. Two outlets can both score low and still pull the frame in opposite directions.

Focus 2 Focus 4 Focus 7 Focus 9

Standing outlet panel

We score every edition against the same panel, so one morning can be compared with the next. UK prominence uses the British outlets. Framing lists for UK and World stories draw on the full international panel and name only the outlets that covered the story that day.

United Kingdom

  • BBC (UK, public-service)
  • Sky News (UK, commercial)
  • Channel 4 (UK, public-service)
  • The Guardian (UK, commercial)
  • The Telegraph (UK, commercial)
  • The Times (UK, commercial)
  • Daily Mail (UK, commercial)
  • The Sun (UK, tabloid)
  • Metro (UK, tabloid)
  • Daily Express (UK, tabloid)

International

  • CNN (US, commercial)
  • Fox News (US, commercial)
  • Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded)
  • Xinhua (China, state news agency)
  • Tehran Times (Iran, government-linked)
  • RIA Novosti (Russia, state-owned)
  • Ynet (Israel, commercial)
  • Folha de S.Paulo (Brazil, commercial)
  • ABC News (US, commercial)
  • France 24 (France, state-funded)
  • CGTN (China, state-owned)