headlines back to January 2016 for this publication. Scores reflect data collected so far and
will shift as more headlines are added. Every number is reproducible from the linked source data.
USA Times Analysis · Presidential Coverage Sentiment Index
Sentiment analysis of every NPR headline about the sitting U.S. president —
Donald Trump for 2016–2021 and 2025–present, Joe Biden for 2021–2025 — scored by an automated, deterministic model
with no human rating or editorial judgment involved in the scoring itself. Because the subject automatically switches with the
administration, the same outlet’s tone can be compared across presidents rather than tracking coverage of one person.
|
49.1
/ 100 · 50 = neutral
|
Average headline sentiment compound score: -0.018 (scale −1 to +1). Based on 639 headlines collected so far, all-time, across both administrations. |
Score by time window
| Window | Score | Headlines | Positive | Neutral | Negative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Last 7 days | 46.6 | 90 | 19
21.1%
|
39
43.3%
|
32
35.6%
|
| Last 30 days | 48.9 | 180 | 43
23.9%
|
85
47.2%
|
52
28.9%
|
| Past year | 47.6 | 258 | 57
22.1%
|
117
45.3%
|
84
32.6%
|
| All-time | 49.1 | 639 | 184
28.8%
|
260
40.7%
|
195
30.5%
|
Monthly trend
By administration
| Administration | Score | Headlines | Positive | Neutral | Negative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trump · Jan 2016–Jan 2021 | 49.5 | 144 | 42
29.2%
|
57
39.6%
|
45
31.2%
|
| Biden · Jan 2021–Jan 2025 | 50.6 | 237 | 85
35.9%
|
86
36.3%
|
66
27.8%
|
| Trump · Jan 2025–present | 47.6 | 255 | 57
22.4%
|
115
45.1%
|
83
32.5%
|
This is the clearest side-by-side bias check on the page: identical methodology applied to two different presidents. A consistent gap between rows suggests a real tone difference by administration rather than noise.
Methodology
- Universe: every headline published by NPR (npr.org) that contains the sitting president’s
name (case-insensitive, whole word — “Trump” for 2016–2021 and 2025–present, “Biden” for 2021–2025), collected via Google
News search restricted to this domain and to the correct name for each date range, date-sliced to avoid missing coverage during high-volume periods. - Scoring model: VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner) — a published,
peer-reviewed lexicon-and-rule-based sentiment model (Hutto & Gilbert, 2014), run identically and
deterministically across every publication, administration, and headline, with no manual adjustment per outlet. - Classification thresholds: compound score ≥ 0.05 = positive;
≤ -0.05 = negative; between = neutral — VADER’s standard published defaults. - Time windows: last 7 / 30 / 365 days are computed relative to the real current date, not
the dataset’s latest headline — “no data yet” means collection hasn’t reached that period, not that no coverage occurred. - What is scored: the headline text only, exactly as published — not the article body, not social framing.
- Reproducibility: every scored headline, its source URL, publish date, subject, and individual score
is listed below, so any result can be independently checked against the live article.
What this score is — and isn’t
This measures headline sentiment, not factual accuracy or overall editorial bias.
A negative score means the language of a headline skews negative in tone — not that the reporting is inaccurate, nor
that the outlet is biased against that president. A publication can score negatively while reporting completely accurately on
genuinely negative news, and can score positively while reporting accurately on genuinely positive news. The by-administration
table above is a comparison tool, not a verdict on its own — the underlying news cycles of each presidency were not identical.
Known limitations:
- VADER can misread sarcasm, quoted speech attributed to the president himself, and domain-specific political language.
- Headline-only scoring misses tone set by article context.
- Sample size varies by period, outlet, and administration; small-sample scores carry wider uncertainty than the number alone shows.
- The “contains the president’s name” filter can pull in incidental mentions, not just president-focused stories.
- This dataset is still growing (see banner above).
Scored headlines (639 shown, most recent first)
Generated 2026-07-18T00:11:59.171146+00:00 · Data source: Google News search, resolved to original
publisher URLs · Model: VADER v3 · USA Times internal analysis.
