About & methodology

Last updated: 13 July 2026

What this site is

Spectrum UK is a news aggregator. It collects headlines, short excerpts and links from the publicly published RSS feeds of ten UK news outlets, groups articles that cover the same story, and shows how coverage is distributed across the political spectrum. Its purpose is media-literacy: helping readers see which stories are being covered, by whom, and which stories one side of the press is not covering (“blindspots”).

What we monitor

For each outlet we read one or more of its official RSS feeds — typically the main UK news section and, where the outlet publishes one, its politics section. This matters for one feature in particular: when a story page says an outlet has not yet been seen covering a story, that means only that nothing appeared in the sections we monitor. The outlet may well have covered it elsewhere on its site — we say so wherever that caveat applies.

Headline rewrites

Outlets sometimes rewrite a headline after publication as a story develops. When we notice that an article we already track reappears with different wording, we record the new wording and show it on the story’s timeline, labelled with the time we first saw it. We record only what the publisher itself published; we don’t speculate about why a headline changed.

Primary sources

Story pages link to official UK records — Hansard, GOV.UK, the Office for National Statistics and legislation.gov.uk. Most of these links are clearly-labelled searches built from the story’s key terms, so you can judge relevance yourself; where a specific document has been attached to a story by hand, it is shown separately. We link to the primary record; we don’t interpret it.

Ownership

The ownership page states who owns each outlet we monitor, drawn from public records such as Companies House filings and published annual reports. These are statements of fact about ownership only — we make no claims about editorial interference at any outlet, and we correct errors promptly if you write to us.

How stories are grouped

Articles published within the last 48 hours are compared by the significant words in their headlines. Articles from different outlets that share enough significant words are grouped into one story. The coverage bar shows how many of the outlets covering a story sit on the left, centre and right of the spectrum. A story is flagged as a blindspot when at least three outlets cover it but no outlet from one side does. Grouping is automatic and approximate — occasionally unrelated articles are grouped together or related ones are missed.

How editorial-lean labels are assigned

Each outlet carries a fixed, whole-outlet label: Left, Lean left, Centre, Lean right, Right. These placements are our indicative editorial opinion, informed by publicly available research on UK media, long-running audience surveys, and how outlets position themselves. They describe an outlet’s general editorial lean — not the accuracy, quality or fairness of any individual article or journalist. Reasonable people disagree about these placements; if you believe one is wrong, contact us and we will review it.

Copyright and fair dealing

All headlines, excerpts and articles remain the copyright of their respective publishers. Spectrum UK never reproduces full article text and never removes attribution: every headline links directly to the original article on the publisher’s own website, where the publisher retains its audience, advertising and subscription relationship. Excerpts are limited to the short descriptions publishers themselves distribute in their RSS feeds. Feeds are fetched at most once every ten minutes. If you are a rights holder and want your feed removed or handled differently, contact us and we will act promptly.

Independence

Spectrum UK is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any of the publishers listed above or to any other news-comparison service. Trade marks belong to their respective owners and are used only to identify the source of each headline.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or removal requests: [email protected].