Reading the news, measured
Understanding the Analysis
Open any story on Nooz.ai and you'll find it wrapped in numbers, badges, and small charts. None of it is there to tell you what to think — it's there to show you how a story is built, so you can read with a little more discernment. Here's what each measure means, in plain language.
The headline number: Influence Score
The big number at the top of every story. It estimates how hard the article is working to move your opinion — from plain reporting to full-on persuasion.
Under 35 — mostly factual. 35–64 — some spin worth noticing. 65+ — leaning on you hard; read critically and check other sources.
At a Glance
A quick, AI-written brief of the story — the who, what, when, where, why, and how — plus a one-line summary and any key figures it mentions. It's there so you can grasp a story in seconds and decide whether to read the whole thing.
Is it substance, or filler? — Article Quality
SNR Score (Signal-to-Noise)
How much of the article is real, substantive content versus padding, repetition, and filler. 60 and up is meaty; below 35 is mostly fluff.
Reading Level & Target Age
How hard the article is to read, expressed as a school grade and a rough reader age — a sense of who it's written for.
Author Level
An estimate of the writing sophistication behind the piece.
Is someone trying to persuade you? — Propaganda
Whether the article leans on recognized persuasion techniques, and how heavily.
Density
How much of the text is actively doing the persuading.
Severity
How manipulative those persuasive moments are.
Techniques
The specific tactics we spotted — things like loaded language, bandwagon appeals, or whataboutism — each named and counted, with a short note on how it works.
Emotional Arc
The emotional shape of the story from beginning to end. A steady, even tone is the calm kind. Arcs that build dread, swing unpredictably, or crescendo to a peak are often designed to move you past your own judgment — we describe what each pattern tends to do.
Five ways a story can push — Influence Pathways
Persuasion doesn't work just one way. We break it into five routes, each scored 0–100.
Overt
The obvious stuff — loaded language, repetition, explicit framing.
Stealth
Subtle bias that looks objective — hedging, selective sourcing, framing by omission.
Emotional
Fear-and-outrage arcs built to bypass rational thinking.
Balanced
Moderate pressure spread across many dimensions — sophisticated and hard to spot.
Quality
An editorial-quality signal. This is the one where higher is better — stronger craft tends to mean less manipulation.
For the first four, higher means more manipulation. Quality is the exception — there, higher is good.
The emotional tone — Sentiment
Overall Tone
The net feel of the writing — positive, negative, or neutral.
Sentiment Flow
Whether the mood rises, falls, or swings as the story unfolds. A steady tone usually signals straight reporting; an emotional rollercoaster often means you're being worked.
Slant behind a straight face — Stealth Manipulation
The most persuasive bias is the kind you never notice — because it never raises its voice.
Some articles wear their agenda openly, with loaded words and obvious outrage. Others do something quieter and far more effective: they keep every hallmark of sober, professional journalism — calm tone, careful attribution, an air of balance — while steadily steering you toward a conclusion. This is the slant that survives a skim, the one that feels like “just the facts” precisely because nothing in it trips the alarm.
This reading looks for those fingerprints. One-sided sourcing — a piece that quotes three voices for one position and a lone, hedged sentence for the other, while never appearing unfair. Framing by omission — the context left on the cutting-room floor, the question conspicuously never asked. Strategic hedging — “critics say,” “some argue,” “it remains unclear” — phrases that quietly discredit one side while keeping the writer's hands clean. And the subtler tells of selective emphasis, where what's true and what's foregrounded quietly part ways.
You'll see an overall score, a severity level, the specific techniques detected with a short note on how each one works, and a flag when the sourcing itself leans one way. None of it means a story is false — only that it may be doing more shaping than its even tone lets on. Read it, and read the other side too.
Has the story changed? — Article History
How many times a story has been edited since it was first published — and, crucially, how many of those were stealth edits: silent changes made without telling readers. If a piece has been quietly rewritten after the fact, you'll see it here.
Tone and safety — Content Safety
A simple content rating (much like a film's G through X) based on language and tone, plus a toxicity reading — a quick sense of what you're walking into.
Who and what — Entities & Related Articles
Entities
The people, places, and organizations a story mentions, pulled out automatically. Click any of them to find other coverage that names the same ones.
Related Articles
Other coverage of the same story or subject, matched by shared people, places, and themes — so you can compare how different outlets are telling it.
Across languages — Translation
News is written in many languages. When a story isn't in English, we translate and summarize it for you — and always tell you the original language.
Learn more
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