Channels
The Broadcasters
What each UK TV news channel focused on, what they left out, and how their agendas compare across the full archive.
Channel 5 Leans health
“Campaigners say they are still being mistreated and neglected.”
5 says campaigners are still mistreated and neglected, while Channel 4 quotes the PM vowing to fight for them.
BBC News Leans international
“Officials say it's human caused, but that's all we know.”
BBC attributes the fire to human causes without specifying intent, while ITV suggests it was deliberately started, implying arson.
BBC One Leans sport
“His call for elections seemed to fall flat, there was very little support for it”
BBC ONE West describes public support for wartime elections as very limited, while BBC NEWS presents a poll indicating half of Ukrainians support elections now, disagreeing on public backing.
BBC Two Leans politics
“the Conservative Party believes in second chances”
Channel 4 Leans international
“the compensation system is unfit for purpose it is making people feel like criminals like they're trying to game the system”
Channel 4 presents the compensation system as unfit and criminalising survivors, while BBC One reports the government as saying victims can access the compensation they deserve.
GB News Leans immigration
“it's a craven opportunity to cash in”
GB News presents Earl Spencer's memoir as a commercial cash-in, while ITV1 presents it as a response to public demand and an attempt to tell the truth.
ITV Leans environment
“thought to have been deliberately started”
BBC attributes the fire to human causes without specifying intent, while ITV suggests it was deliberately started, implying arson.
Sky News Leans international
“they're behind a lot of the Nabu and Sapo operations, the anti-corruption operations, because they think that they will weaken Zelensky by doing that.”
⚑ Flagged quotes reflect the language a broadcaster used, not a judgement of its accuracy.
All-Time Comparison
Coverage, news density, flagged omissions, disputed language, and how each channel's mix of stories changed over time. Flagged omissions is a count, not a rate: channels running shorter bulletins are already excused, so read it against the days on air beside it. Click a column to sort.
| Channel | Coverage | News density | Flagged omissions | Days on air | Flagged quotes / hr | Agenda change | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BBC One | 66h 43m | 80% | 7 | 53 | 3.7/hr | Distinct | |
| BBC News | 54h 4m | 77% | 17 | 52 | 2.3/hr | Highly distinct | |
| GB News | 50h 45m | 68% | 57 | 50 | 2.1/hr | Highly distinct | |
| Sky News | 48h 2m | 80% | 20 | 53 | 3.9/hr | Typical | |
| ITV | 43h 22m | 73% | 12 | 55 | 3.9/hr | Distinct | |
| Channel 4 | 34h 8m | 79% | 21 | 50 | 4.2/hr | Typical | |
| Channel 5 | 22h 37m | 63% | 17 | 54 | 2.9/hr | Distinct | |
| BBC Two | 17h 48m | 84% | 1 | 37 | 1.1/hr | Distinct |
Difference measures how far a channel's topic mix sits from the cross-channel average, adjusted for how many topics we observed the channel covering — a narrow programme would otherwise look distinctive purely for having no room to cover much. It is a description of emphasis, not a judgement.
News density is the share of each analysed slot spent on identified news stories — ad breaks, weather, sport and trails count as “not news”.
How bleak, how hard
The share of each channel's airtime given to bad-news stories and to light ones. This is about which stories a channel chose to run, and for how long, not about how it covered them. Hidden until enough of the window has been scored.
Each channel's position is the share of its airtime given to bad-news stories and to light ones: what it chose to run, and for how long. It is not a measure of how any channel covered anything.
- Bad news, good news
- Whether things got worse or better for the people in the story. Most stories are neither, which is why the two never add up to a whole bulletin.
- Light
- Human interest, sport, curiosity: a story with no consequence beyond the people in it. A record-breaking water lily is light; a defence spending shortfall is not. This is a separate question from good and bad, so a light story can still be sad.
- BBC News
- Channel 4
- Sky News
- BBC One
- GB News
- ITV
- Channel 5
- BBC Two
| Channel | Bad news | Good news | Light | Stories |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BBC News | 61% | 10% | 15% | 209 |
| Channel 4 | 58% | 10% | 10% | 92 |
| Sky News | 56% | 11% | 17% | 130 |
| BBC One | 55% | 15% | 19% | 249 |
| GB News | 50% | 2% | 18% | 91 |
| ITV | 53% | 13% | 26% | 186 |
| Channel 5 | 47% | 18% | 35% | 162 |
| BBC Two | 40% | 11% | 8% | 34 |
Disputed language over time
Contested and charged quotes per hour of analysed airtime, by day. Flagged quotes reflect the language a broadcaster aired, not a judgement of its accuracy.
Distinctive vocabulary
Words and phrases that set a channel apart from the rest over the last 30 days — word choice, not a judgement of accuracy or bias. Only channels whose vocabulary differs measurably from the rest appear — 4 of 8 here; the others sit too close to the average to have distinctive terms.
Agenda Alignment
How similar each pair of channels was in the topics they covered. Darker means more alike.
Channel Differences
Where each channel covered more or less of a category than the average channel.
Broadcaster Agenda Comparison
How each channel divided its coverage between topic categories across the full archive.
Topics That Travel Together
For each channel, the two topics it most often runs on the same day — set against how often the rest of the roster pairs those same two. Same-day co-occurrence describes what shared a bulletin day, not why.
- GB News Immigration + Nigel Farage 69% vs 5% 11/16 days
- BBC News Ukraine + US-Iran 71% vs 8% 17/24 days
- Channel 5 Wimbledon + Heatwave 63% vs 21% 5/8 days
- BBC One Immigration + Commonwealth Games 75% vs 8% 6/8 days
- Sky News Labour + Andy Burnham 42% vs 19% 5/12 days
- ITV Wildfires + Gaza 63% vs 23% 5/8 days
No pairing clears the evidence floor yet for BBC Two and Channel 4 — a channel needs 4 days running both topics, out of at least 8 days covering either.