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  • Top topics digest — the cards score the selected period against the prior 4 weeks.
  • 12-week heatmap & outlet matrix — show the 12 weeks ending at the selected week (they slide back with the picker, they aren’t a fixed snapshot).
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  • Coverage gap quadrant — scores the selected period against the 12 weeks before it (not including it).
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What stays as-is
  • Outlet orientation strip / lean colours — context-only, drawn from the last 12 weeks of activity regardless.
  • Co-occurrence graph — recent-activity anchored, not picker-driven.
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Topic

Newstalk Zb Interview Controversy

4 items · 4 aliases · peaked week of 26 Apr 2026 · first seen 9 May 2026

A podcast episode examines the controversy surrounding Mikey Sherman's remarks, the backlash from free speech purists, and the legal implications of flag desecration, while also reflecting on personal grief and media ethics.

Volume by source orientation Methodology →

Stacked weekly counts; colour by lean. “n/a” covers government and iwi-Māori sources where lean isn't applicable.

Alias drift

How this topic has been named, week by week. A new alias winning out is usually a framing shift.

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In the press Methodology →

How the news corpus has covered this same topic over the last 12 weeks. 1 article from RNZ, Stuff, NZ Herald, ODT, 1News, Newsroom and The Spinoff. Click through to the press view for the full panel.

12-week press volume 1 article
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Heard on radio

Verbatim segments from politicians speaking on podcasts and radio shows about this topic. Sourced via the voice-reference library — each speaker has been confirmed manually from their voice clip. Click play to stream the original audio from the publisher, pre-seeked to the moment the quote starts.

  • I'm already hearing people denounce that as a theory, but that is a possible context which might make it, if it was that, different. We don't know the context right now, but what I'm about to show you from Newstalk ZB Wellington is, quote, what did I say? He's pressing Christopher Hibkins because we know the whole context is about to be what's said to Chris Hibkins about this issue. Before we do, and by the way, I'm not putting that theory out there as gospel. I've got no... no clue what's going on but I guess what I'm saying is when you have no clue you have no context can there be a situation where context which when to use that F slur is okay I mean amongst boys saying horrifically horrible things to one another In the safety and security of your own house, most people might go, to coin a phrase, Chewie, locker room banter. Heard that somewhere before. In a work setting, a couple of friends doing that to one another, that's really unwise. No matter what, it's really unwise. But the context may not have been the vicious nature in which it's about to be explained to us as. Yes. Look, Chewie, I actually want you to.
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Sample framings

Up to 12 framings spread across orientations. Each framing is a short phrase the topic extractor generated to characterise the piece's stance — not a quote from the source. Click through to read the original.

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How the public reacted

Social-media signal on the same topic, drawn from the social lens. Engagement is likes + 2×shares + 3×replies, the same weighting used across the digest cards. View on /social →

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