SPIN·DETECTOR

How the coverage framed it

Coverage of Novaya Gazeta's closure was largely uniform across the outlets sampled, with a bias spread of just 0.0 points separating them. Both CNN and Politico led with emotionally charged victim quotes drawn directly from those associated with the newspaper — CNN's headline used "They killed us," while Politico chose the first-person "We have been killed" — rather than neutral descriptive language. Neither outlet adopted distancing or skeptical framing; both presented the closure as something done to the newspaper rather than a neutral institutional event. The shared framing signals sympathy for independent press and positions the Kremlin as an aggressor, which accounts for the modest left-leaning scores each outlet received. Notably, no outlet in this sample offered a more detached or government-neutral characterization of the shutdown, meaning readers encountered a consistent, emotionally resonant frame regardless of which of these sources they consulted.