How TOLD works
TOLD shows how the same event is covered by news sources around the world. The catalogue holds 457 sources; 261 of them have a live feed TOLD reads continuously. This page explains what the site contains, how the numbers are produced, and how to read it as plain text.
What TOLD is
TOLD is an aggregator, not a newsroom. It publishes no reporting of its own. It reads the headlines that news sources publish, groups them by event, and places the versions side by side so a reader can compare coverage instead of trusting one outlet.
Every headline links back to the newsroom that published it. TOLD does not reproduce articles, and it does not rate any source for truthfulness.
Use TOLD when the question is about how an event was covered: which newsrooms reported it and which did not, how the framing differed between countries, how a story developed over time, or who owns and funds a given outlet. For the facts of an event, follow the headline link to the newsroom.
What is on the front page
The front page is built from these sections, in this order.
- Sensations
- TOLD watches the feed for moments when many independent outlets report the same story at once. That cluster becomes a Sensation, and it leaves the list 24 hours after its first report.
- The brief
- The Brief is 24 hours in seven stories. Every day, we measure coverage across the global press to find the seven events that dominated the headlines.
- The perspective
- One story, three sources.
- Ongoing
- Topics TOLD follows over time. For each one, we keep collecting the latest headlines from our 261 live sources as new coverage appears.
- Newsstream
- The newest headline from newsrooms around the world, refreshed as new coverage appears.
- Last week
- The week we just read, counted. Headlines collected, days covered, and the story the most newsrooms reported. Saved every Sunday.
- Newsagent
- TOLD's source catalogue: 457 outlets from around the world. Open any source to see its ownership, funding and alignment.
Where the numbers come from
TOLD reads RSS feeds from 261 news sources, every thirty minutes, and more often while a story is breaking. Headlines that are not in Latin script are filtered out, as is affiliate and gambling spam.
Every coverage percentage on the site divides by the 261 sources with a readable feed, never by the full catalogue of 457. A source without a live feed has a profile but cannot contribute a headline, so counting it in the denominator would understate every story.
Regions are resolved from the source catalogue, and the pool is uneven. Europe is the largest region and several others are thin, so the absence of coverage from a small region says more about what TOLD can read than about what the press published. Where the site names an absence, it names the number of sources it read alongside it.
How sources are classified
Alignment describes a pattern in what an outlet publishes over time. It is not a description of the people who work there, and a single article often falls outside its own outlet’s label.
It is not a quality rating. A source can lean and still report carefully. A source can be balanced and still get it wrong. No position on this scale is treated as better than another, and nothing in TOLD ranks, hides or promotes a source by its position.
Left and right do not mean the same thing everywhere. In many countries, who owns an outlet and how close it stands to the state says more than a left–right label. Ownership is listed in every profile for that reason.
The scale has nine positions:
- Non-aligned
- Not clearly left or right. Doesn’t follow a consistent left–right framing.
- State-aligned
- Often follows the government line and rarely criticizes the current government. Different from public service.
- Far Left
- Strong anti-capitalist framing and calls for major systemic change. Stories often emphasize class struggle, redistribution, and collective power.
- Left
- Focus on equality, welfare, and regulation. Coverage often highlights workers’ rights, social programs, and criticism of corporate power.
- Lean Left
- Mostly balanced, but with recurring progressive framing. Topics like climate, minority rights, and public services often get extra attention.
- Balanced
- No consistent left or right push. Often includes multiple viewpoints or keeps a neutral tone on polarizing issues.
- Lean Right
- Mostly balanced, but with recurring pro-market framing. Topics like business climate, personal responsibility, and economic growth get extra attention.
- Right
- Focus on free markets, national sovereignty, and traditional institutions. Coverage often emphasizes low taxes, limited state intervention, and law-and-order.
- Far Right
- Strong nationalist and hard traditional-order framing. Often prioritizes in-group interests and criticizes immigration, multiculturalism, and global institutions.
Every source has its own page with its country, language, founding year, ownership, funding, focus areas and position, plus its most recent headlines.
Reading TOLD as plain text
Every page on told.news answers with markdown when the request carries `Accept: text/markdown`, and the same content is available at a fixed address under `/md`. The markdown is a few kilobytes where the HTML is over a megabyte, and it carries the same content.
- /llms.txtA short index of the site: what TOLD is, when to use it, and where the key pages are.
- /llms-full.txtThe extended reference, including the complete source catalogue grouped by region.
- /mdThe front page as markdown: today's Brief, live Sensations, Ongoing threads and The Perspective.
- /md/news-sourcesThe catalogue summarised by region and by editorial position.
- /news-sources/{domain}One page per source, for example /news-sources/bbc.com. Add /md in front for markdown.
- /sitemap.xmlEvery addressable page, including one per source and one per followed topic.
There is no public API and no authentication. Everything above is a plain GET with no key. Please read at a reasonable rate.
What TOLD does not do
TOLD does not rate sources for truthfulness or quality. The position on a profile describes a pattern in what an outlet publishes, based on ownership, funding and focus. It is not a score, and nothing on the site sorts, hides or promotes a source by its position.
TOLD does not draw conclusions about an event. It counts and compares coverage and leaves the reading to you.
TOLD is not complete. It reads the sources it can read. A story missing from TOLD may simply have been published by a newsroom outside the pool, or in a language the ingest filters out.
Where TOLD uses AI to generate text or to judge, and where it never does, is listed in full on the AI transparency page.
Corrections and contact
Every source profile carries the date of its latest assessment. If a classification, an ownership line or anything else looks wrong, write to report@told.news and say which source it concerns.
TOLD news is operated by Gaerhenäs, Sweden.