OpenBrief
⌘K
Log in Sign up
What the picker changes
  • 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).
  • Per-topic volume / alias drift — same 12-week trailing window, anchored on the selected period.
  • Coverage gap quadrant — scores the selected period against the 12 weeks before it (not including it).
  • Anomaly cards — only show alerts the detector fired during the selected period. Quiet weeks legitimately show none.
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.
  • Source & topic profiles — all-time data for the topic; the picker doesn’t affect them.
Rolling 7 days is a sliding live window for “current vibes”; switch to Weekly to compare specific weeks side-by-side.
Weekly Rolling 7 days
live window
Topic

Waitaki Rates Hike Transparency

16 items · 10 aliases · peaked week of 10 May 2026 · first seen 8 May 2026

The Taxpayers’ Union criticizes Waitaki District Council for not consulting ratepayers on a lower rates increase option and accuses Minister Watts of enabling councils to implement steep hikes by delaying the rates cap until 2029.

Sample framings

Up to 12 framings across outlets and orientations — each a short phrase the extractor generated to characterise the piece's editorial angle (not a quote). Filter by lean to see how each bloc is spinning the story; click through to read the original.

the-country Centre-right

bureaucratic overreach and financial collapse

The Country 14/05/26: Jane Smith talks to Jamie Mackay
14 May
taxpayers-union Right

council concealed viable lower option

Waitaki rates stitch-up shows Watts must bring cap forward
7 May

Influence organisations active on this topic

Lobby groups, unions, think tanks and industry bodies whose own releases or whose people’s media appearances touched this topic over the last 12 months. Owned = their own press releases; earned = their people quoted across radio, press & commentary. A card carried in both — with the release coming first — is the agenda-setting signal. Co-occurrence isn’t proof a group drove the coverage.

New Zealand Taxpayers' Union
1 mention critical
Advocacy group right Owned · 1

council concealed viable lower option

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.

Free account Watch this topic with a free account — get alerted when framing shifts, when an MP adopts new language, or when discourse and press diverge. Create a free account Log in

In the press Methodology →

How the news corpus has covered this same topic over the last 12 weeks. 10 articles 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 10 articles
+4 more headlines on this topic Create a free account →

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.

+1 more radio clip on this topic Create a free account →

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 →

Spotted something wrong on this page? Report a correction.