Melbourne, VIC

Victoria earthquake: Towns rattled by 4.8 magnitude tremor

7NEWS Savannah Meacham

3 Oct 2026 03:02 AEST Summary

From the report

A late-night 4.8 magnitude earthquake has shaken Victoria, awaking residents when their houses began swaying. More than 14,000 people have reported feeling the tremor, Geoscience Australia said.

How outlets headlined it

Each outlet's own headline. ~~Struck through~~: the loaded words our version leaves out. Plainest first.

7NEWS Victoria earthquake: Towns rattled by 4.8 magnitude tremor plain
WAtoday Magnitude 4.8 earthquake rattles Melbourne, Victoria plain
ABC News ~~Breaking:~~ Magnitude-4.8 earthquake strikes in rural Victoria 1 change

Headline check

Nothing in this headline could be checked against the report.

Nothing was measured here, so nothing is claimed. One figure in this headline has a decimal point in it. We match figures digit for digit against the report, and that comparison is not reliable for decimals, so that one was not checked either way rather than reported as missing. How this is checked

This is a summary. The indicators are not. Every score on this page was measured over the full 213-word report, which is the only way the numbers mean anything.

How it is written

Niral Score 5.1 · calm mundaneloaded

10 more readings adjectives, repeated words, sentiment, sourcing and 1 more and 5 at zero

Highlighted in the text. Words that carry a fact and quoted words are not counted.

earthquake4magnitude4tremor4felt3residents3another2houses2late-night2media2person2reported2resident2social2swaying2wrote2

Sentiment -0.3 hostilefavourable Sourcing 63 unattributednamed sources Mood 18.1 sorrowjoyful

5 read zero: political diction, generational, gender, jingoistic, religious

Political diction 0 left-codedright-coded Generational 0 harder on the oldharder on the young Gender 0 no gendered framingframing throughout Jingoistic 0 reports to a readerwrites from a camp Religious 0 not invokedovert

How the article is written, not whether it is correct. How each is measured.

Measured on 7NEWS’s report as filed, which is all we may publish of this one.

How this outlet filed it, and how we rewrote it

No other newsroom we read has filed on this event, so there is nothing to compare it with yet.

Also covered by WAtoday, The Age, Brisbane Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, ABC News. We hold only their summary of it, not the report, so there is nothing of theirs to measure here.

Outlet	Niral Score
7NEWSas they published this story	5.1

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The same event elsewhere

5 other outlets filed this story. The scoreboard above is what they did differently.

WAtoday Magnitude 4.8 earthquake rattles Melbourne, Victoria Niral 7.5 · calm political 0 The Age Magnitude 4.8 earthquake rattles Melbourne, Victoria Niral 7.5 · calm political 0 Brisbane Times Magnitude 4.8 earthquake rattles Melbourne, Victoria Niral 7.5 · calm political 0 The Sydney Morning Herald Magnitude 4.8 earthquake rattles Melbourne, Victoria Niral 7.5 · calm political 0 ABC News Magnitude-4.8 earthquake strikes in rural Victoria Niral 17 · mostly calm political 0