America is more polarized than ever. Trust in our institutions is in free fall. The media, technology, and social media lock us into our bubbles and crystallize this growing divide.
In Top Down News, we unify, compare, and distill many mainstream perspectives that capture the majority of America’s political readership to approximate the truth. Dive deeper into the analysis for this post here, powered by AI-based Natural Language Understanding and D3-based Dynamic visualizations.
Last Week in a Nutshell
Below are the top stories across mainstream media outlets that cover the political spectrum, calculated by aligning stories across sources and tracking where they rank on their website .1
Exclusive Coverage
Certain outlets are emphasizing the importance of specific stories far beyond the rest of mainstream media.
Head to Head
How do two news sources compare in terms of topic coverage?
CNN vs Fox News
From a 2020 Pew Report, 60% of Republicans turn to Fox News for political news and 53% of Democrats turn to CNN. This is a leading indicator of what each base is reading and thinking about.
There is much more coverage on Covid 19 (Fox News is emphasizing vaccines were overplayed) and Climate change (slamming climate activists) from Fox News, while CNN dominates coverage on abortion, the heat wave, markets, and Ukraine.
Topic Deep Dive
Covid 19
After some time, Covid 19 returns as a trending topic and garners coverage from almost every mainstream media source. Here’s the coverage breakdown in reporting from various sources.
Left
NBC News: New study estimates how many children will get long Covid
Washington Post: I got my young kids covid vaccines. I hope more parents do the same.
Right
Washington Examiner: CDC grilled after revealing it didn't perform data analysis on reported adverse effects of COVID vaccines
Fox News: We overplayed COVID vaccines: Dr Birx
Justice Department Trump Investigation
Left
New York Times: Analysis: Urgency of Jan. 6 and Georgia Inquiries Puts Pressure on Garland
Right
Fox News: Merrick Garland's response when asked if Biden admin will prosecute Trump
Fox News: Turley sounds off on ramped up criminal investigation into Trump: 'This is a very different situation'
Pelosi Taiwan Trip
Left
NBC News: While China has long used combative language, some worry new threats over Pelosi's Taiwan trip aren't empty
CNN: Pelosi's possible visit to Taiwan raises concerns China might interfere with airspace, US official says
Washington Post: Pelosi should go to Taiwan — when the time is right
Right
Fox News: US military makes move in South China Sea ahead of possible Pelosi visit
Washington Examiner: Speaker Pelosi should go to Taiwan
Fox News: Dan Bongino: Pelosi's Taiwan trip could be something to ‘change the history books’
As always, all the data and visualizations are available on Observable - dive deeper, and please call out the issues you’ll see so we can improve our algorithms to present you with the best data possible.
By topically categorizing every story on each front page (twice daily) and tracking where it ranked on the front page. The top headline of a front page has a high score (closer to 1), and the bottom headline has a low score (close to 0). We add up all the scores for each topic, rank the topics by the summed scores, and then select the least biased headline for that topic to generate the top stories.