Short answer: The headline is the symptom, not the story. A signal is something that changes conditions over time: a contract, a law, a piece of infrastructure, a large capital movement. Noise is something that changes the mood for a day: a tweet, a statement, a poll, an op-ed. The simple test: a year from now, will this still change someone's numbers?
The longer view
A simple reading method, in three steps. First, which layer is the event happening in: narrative and media (fast, usually noise), capital and regulation (medium, sometimes signal), resources and demographics (slow, almost always signal). Second, did anyone pay money as a result of the event, or only talk. Third, does the event connect two layers. An event that touches two layers at once, for example a regulation that changes a capital flow, is almost always a signal.
One more rule: the world changes on quiet days. Regulatory decisions, trade agreements and infrastructure investments are published on page seven, not in the lead headline. Whoever reads only the lead headline sees the noise and misses the signal.
This is a reading through the seven layers of The Blue Pumpkin, the method of Dr. Bella Barda-Bareket.
What to do tomorrow morning
Take the three biggest geopolitical headlines of the week and ask of each: which layer is it happening in, and who paid money for it.