About
About Broadcast Prism
A clearer way to read the TV news agenda.
Broadcast Prism compares how selected UK TV news channels cover the same stories. Use it to compare UK TV news broadcasts: what led the agenda, what got little time, and what some channels missed.
What the site shows
A daily view of the stories, topics, and gaps across channels.
- What everyone covered. The site groups similar stories across channels so you can see where the agenda lined up.
- What only some channels covered. It highlights stories that appeared on some broadcasts but not others.
- How much attention each story got. Airtime helps show the difference between a brief mention and a story that shaped the broadcast.
- A shared summary. For major stories, Broadcast Prism brings together what the covering channels said and writes a cross-channel summary.
How to read it
This is a map of attention, not a ruling on truth.
A story that appears on every channel is not automatically true. A story that appears on one channel is not automatically false. The site shows where attention went, and where it did not.
Shorter broadcasts naturally cover fewer stories. Broadcast Prism tries to account for that before calling something a coverage gap.
Channels covered
The seven selected channels currently included in the comparison.
| Channel | Broad position |
|---|---|
| BBC One | Centre-left / liberal |
| BBC Two | Centre-left / analytical |
| Channel 4 | Progressive |
| ITV | Mainstream commercial |
| Sky News | Centre-right |
| GB News | Right / populist |
| Channel 5 | Lighter commercial |
What to keep in mind
The analysis is useful, but it is not perfect.
Broadcast Prism summaries are shared cross-channel summaries, not objective accounts. A shared summary can be wrong. It can also miss something that only one channel covered. Topics and coverage come from automated transcript analysis and may contain errors. Treat this site as a map of where attention went, not a verdict on what happened. See the methodology for how each metric is calculated.