Breaking news

Breaking news represents important stories rapidly gaining traction across multiple sources. News API identifies these events by analyzing coverage patterns and grouping articles by content similarity — surfacing high-impact events as they emerge.

How it works

Clustering

Recently published articles are automatically grouped based on content similarity.

Validation

Each cluster is analyzed for breaking news signals: sudden spikes in publication frequency, coverage across multiple publishers, and presence of high-ranking news sources.

Deduplication

Duplicate content within clusters is filtered out while preserving source diversity.

Historical analysis

New candidates are compared against recent breaking news to track continuing stories.

AI evaluation

An AI analysis step confirms whether a cluster represents a significant event.

Classification

Clusters meeting the breaking news criteria receive a special flag in the system.

When you query /breaking_news, you receive the most representative article from each breaking news cluster. Results are ordered by cluster size, so the most widely covered stories appear first.

Query endpoint

curl -X POST "https://v3-api.newscatcherapi.com/api/breaking_news" \
  -H "x-api-token: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "theme": "Business",
    "page_size": 100,
    "top_n_articles": 5
  }'

from newscatcher import NewscatcherApi

client = NewscatcherApi(api_key="YOUR_API_KEY")

response = client.breaking_news.post(
    theme="Business",
    page_size=100,
    top_n_articles=5,
)

for event in response.breaking_news_events:
    print(f"Event {event.event_id}: {event.articles_count} articles")
    print(f"  Top article: {event.articles[0].title}")

import { NewscatcherApiClient } from "newscatcher-sdk";

const client = new NewscatcherApiClient({ apiKey: "YOUR_API_KEY" });

const response = await client.breakingNews.post({
  theme: "Business",
  pageSize: 100,
  topNArticles: 5,
});

response.breakingNewsEvents?.forEach((event) => {
  console.log(`Event ${event.eventId}: ${event.articlesCount} articles`);
  console.log(`  Top article: ${event.articles?.[0]?.title}`);
});

import com.newscatcher.api.NewscatcherApiClient;
import com.newscatcher.api.resources.breakingnews.requests.PostBreakingNewsRequest;

NewscatcherApiClient client = NewscatcherApiClient.builder()
    .apiKey("YOUR_API_KEY")
    .build();

var response = client.breakingNews().post(
    PostBreakingNewsRequest.builder()
        .theme("Business")
        .pageSize(100)
        .topNArticles(5)
        .build()
);

response.getBreakingNewsEvents().forEach(event -> {
    System.out.println("Event " + event.getEventId() + ": " + event.getArticlesCount() + " articles");
    System.out.println("  Top article: " + event.getArticles().get(0).getTitle());
});

Response format

{
  "status": "ok",
  "total_hits": 465,
  "page": 1,
  "total_pages": 5,
  "page_size": 100,
  "breaking_news_events": [
    {
      "event_id": "15610469432059813057",
      "articles_count": 5842,
      "articles": [
        {
          "title": "...",
          "author": "...",
          "published_date": "...",
          "link": "...",
          "domain_url": "..."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

For a full description of response fields, see the Breaking news endpoint reference.

Comparison with other endpoints

	Breaking news	Search	Latest headlines
Purpose	Discover high-impact emerging stories	Find specific content	Retrieve recent headlines
Time scope	Fixed at 24 hours	Configurable with `from_` and `to_`	Configurable with `when`
Result grouping	Clustered by event	Individual articles	Individual articles
Primary sorting	By cluster size	By relevance, date, or rank	By publication date
Use cases	Media monitoring, market intelligence, crisis monitoring	Content curation, research, entity tracking	News feeds, topic monitoring

Use cases

Media monitoring — quickly identify emerging stories without tracking multiple sources manually.
Content curation — surface trending stories for newsletters, apps, or websites based on coverage traction.
Market intelligence — detect potentially market-moving events as they gain media coverage.
Crisis monitoring — identify sudden surges in coverage about topics of concern.

Get started

Guides and concepts

How to

Troubleshooting

API Reference

Libraries

How it works

Query endpoint

Response format

Comparison with other endpoints

Use cases

See also

​How it works

​Query endpoint

​Response format

​Comparison with other endpoints

​Use cases

​See also

How it works

Query endpoint

Response format

Comparison with other endpoints

Use cases

See also