The arithmetic for one report
Time to fight back: five leading thinkers on what Democrats should do post-midterms
65High density of flagged expressions
What was read
795 words in the outlet's own voice, plus 13 in the headline. 0% of the text is in quotes. 0 attribution markers (such as "said" or "according to") found.
Scare quotes (a phrase of one to three words in quotation marks with no speaker in the same sentence): blue wave
. Since method 3.1.0 their words count as the outlet's own.
Words found
- Word choice:
corrupt
2 points Editorializing
majority of voters repudiated the corrupt , racist Republican party that made liferacist
3 points Contentious label
of voters repudiated the corrupt, racist Republican party that made life unaffordabledisastrous
2 points Editorializing
trade wars and the failed, disastrous war in Iran while not gettingweaponization
2 points Contentious label
the rule of law. Trump’s weaponization of the Department of Justice to - Raises the temperature:
sweeping
1 point Raises the temperature
control of Congress in a sweeping blue wave – now the real - Attribution phrases:
reportedly
2 points Unnamed source
key foreign policy issue while reportedly remaining on the dole of foreign
Layer scores
Rates are counted points per 1,000 words of the story's own text. For a story longer than 200 words, the rate used is the average of the whole-story rate and the rate in its densest 200-word stretch, so neutral filler cannot dilute a loaded passage away. Score = 100 × (loaded end − rate used) ÷ loaded end, kept between 0 and 100. Headline words count only in the headline layer.
| Layer | Points | Words | Whole-story rate | Densest 200 words | Rate used | Scale | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Word choice | 9 | 795 | 11.3 | 35.0 (words 101 to 300) | 23.2 | 0 to 40 | 42 |
| Temperature | 1 | 795 | 1.3 | 5.0 (words 1 to 200) | 3.1 | 0 to 40 | 92 |
| Flagged attribution phrases | 2 | 795 | 2.5 | 10.0 (words 451 to 650) | 6.3 | 0 to 20 | 69 |
| Headline wording | 0 | 25 | 0.0 | headline only | 0.0 | 0 to 240 | 100 |
Densest stretch: Word choice, words 101 to 300 of 795, with corrupt
, racist
, disastrous
; Temperature, words 1 to 200 of 795, with sweeping
; Flagged attribution phrases, words 451 to 650 of 795, with reportedly
.
Shown, not scored: the headline's rate minus the rate of the story's first 80 words is 0.0 points per 1,000 words.
Overall
Weighted geometric mean of the layers that are established, with 10 added to each layer first and taken away at the end: (Word choice 42 + 10)0.4 × (Temperature 92 + 10)0.3 × (Flagged attribution phrases 69 + 10)0.2 × (Headline wording 100 + 10)0.1 − 10 = 65. Adding 10 means one layer at 0 lowers the total steeply without collapsing it. A weak layer pulls the total down.
Lowered the score most: Word choice.
Name-swap test: with party, politician and institution names swapped, this report's score moves by 0.0 points.
The outlet labels this report as opinion, so it does not count toward the outlet's news score.
What a reader could check
| People named as sources | 0 |
|---|---|
| Unnamed sources | 1 (100% of all sources found) |
| Links to primary records (government, court, filings, PDFs) | 0 |
| Documents cited in the text (a report, bill, ruling, filing) | 0 |
| Checkable specifics (numbers and dates) | 6 |
| Data shown (a table or chart) | yes |
| Correction or clarification noted | no |
What a reader could check, counted by published patterns. Shown beside the score, never part of it. How each count works
Checked against the official record
No vote count or bill number found in the text read.
Record of this measurement
Method 3.1.0, word-list fingerprint 807a17189402a416, read by text extractor version 4. Fingerprint of the text read: 599244d562eb30df. Internet Archive copy nearest the time it was read. The text read was not kept (read before method 3.1.0, or from the feed only), so a later rule change can be applied only while the report is still in the outlet's feed.