The arithmetic for one report
Trump Learned The Wrong Lesson On Immigration From The Midterm Wipeout
73Moderate density of flagged expressions
What was read
956 words in the outlet's own voice, plus 11 in the headline. 8% of the text is in quotes. 6 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): good people
, law-abiding
, Operation Wetback,
, put out
, pretty far right.
, comprehensive immigration reform
. Since method 3.1.0 their words count as the outlet's own.
Words found
- Word choice:
actually
1 point Editorializing
his policies, on immigration voters actually preferred Republicans by 44 percent comparedabsolutely
1 point Editorializing
from which the president should absolutely refuse to back away. Yet somehowillegal aliens
3 points Contentious label
who knowingly hire and employ illegal aliens . On the question of deporting illegalsinsisted
2 points Loaded word for "said"
went into damage control. Trump insisted at a press conference that thereessentially
1 point Editorializing
The Dignity Act, however, is essentially the same comprehensive immigration reform the - Raises the temperature:
massive
1 point Raises the temperature
a way to rectify the massive surge of illegal immigration that occurred - Attribution phrases:
reportedly
2 points Unnamed source
Eisenhower administration’s Operation Wetback, which reportedly removed more than a million illegal
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 | 8 | 956 | 8.4 | 25.0 (words 401 to 600) | 16.7 | 0 to 40 | 58 |
| Temperature | 1 | 956 | 1.0 | 5.0 (words 151 to 350) | 3.0 | 0 to 40 | 92 |
| Flagged attribution phrases | 2 | 956 | 2.1 | 10.0 (words 201 to 400) | 6.0 | 0 to 20 | 70 |
| Headline wording | 0 | 25 | 0.0 | headline only | 0.0 | 0 to 240 | 100 |
Densest stretch: Word choice, words 401 to 600 of 956, with illegal aliens
, insisted
; Temperature, words 151 to 350 of 956, with massive
; Flagged attribution phrases, words 201 to 400 of 956, 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. Experimental: 1 of 4 names and figures in the headline also appear in the text read.
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 58 + 10)0.4 × (Temperature 92 + 10)0.3 × (Flagged attribution phrases 70 + 10)0.2 × (Headline wording 100 + 10)0.1 − 10 = 73. 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.
What a reader could check
| People named as sources | 2 (Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Time Magazine) |
|---|---|
| Unnamed sources | 1 (33% 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) | 28 |
| Data shown (a table or chart) | no |
| 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: ea4953a683864828. 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.