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Interactive Media Monitoring Dashboard
Interactive Media Monitoring Dashboard
Data, Method, and Limitations
Data, Method, and Limitations
This media monitoring tool presents news coverage of Trump’s tariffs using articles published between February 1, 2025 and November 30, 2025 by Canadian and US legacy media outlets.
The Canadian news outlets featured in this tool include the following:
BNN Bloomberg
Canada's National Observer
CBC
Financial Post
Global News
National Post
The Globe and Mail
The US news outlets featured in this tool include the following:
Bloomberg
CBS News
Chicago Tribune
CNBC
CNN
Fox News
MSNBC
NBC News
New York Post
NPR
The New York Times
The all-distilroberta-v1 sentence-embedding model was used to identify granular sub-topics in the data. A heuristic approach was used to merge sub-topics into workable topics, which were further merged to create high-level subcategories. The data is presented using Microsoft PowerBI.
All data used in the media monitoring tool was sourced from the GDELT Project. Articles were filtered based on the presence of the words “tariff” and/or “tariffs” in the URL of the article. Human interest stories and idiosyncratic publication formats, including weekly debriefs and news quizzes, were generally excluded from the analysis to simplify topic modelling. Articles that could not be sorted into a topic were flagged and subsequently deleted from the model. The final version of the data set featured in the media monitoring tool contains 4,639 articles. There are 86 topics organized into 15 subcategories. 2,388 articles were published by US news outlets and 2,251 by Canadian news outlets.
The original data set collected from GDELT based on the presence of the words “tariff” and/or “tariffs” in the URL of the article contained nearly 10,000 articles. Over half of this original data set was eliminated in the process of topic modelling and developing broader categories.
Note: an outage affected GDELT services in the second half of June. As a result, no data was collected for that time period.
Analysis
Analysis
Figure 1. Proportion of news coverage by topic area among US news outlets in November 2025.
November 2025 saw the most unequal distribution of coverage of any month among US news outlets.
Of higher-level topics, deliberation by the US Supreme Court on the constitutionality of President Trump’s tariffs (topic called “Supreme Court Tariff Challenge”) saw the greatest amount of news coverage by US and Canadian news outlets in November 2025, representing 26.9% of total news coverage (36 news articles). 29 of these were published by US news outlets, accounting for 33% of all US news coverage for that month, and just 7 by Canadian news outlets, accounting for just 15.2% of all Canadian news coverage for that month).
Figure 2. Proportion of news coverage by topic area among Canadian news outlets in June 2025.
June 2025 saw the most unequal distribution of coverage of any month among Canadian news outlets.
In Canadian news media, the topic called “Steel and Aluminum Sector” dominated news coverage in June 2025, representing 32.9% of all news coverage and accounting for 27 articles published by Canadian news outlets. Of the ten months covered by the analysis, no other month saw a greater proportion of total coverage represented by a single topic.
Sectoral Sentiment Discrepancies
Sectoral Sentiment Discrepancies
Figure 3. Comparison of sentiment score average for oil industry coverage to sentiment score average for “Commodities Markets” subcategory.
Among all news stories related to commodity markets published by US and Canadian news outlets, articles on the oil industry saw relatively negative coverage, with a sentiment score of -2.5 (across 90 articles) compared to the subcategory average for commodity markets of -1.6 (across a total of 445 articles).
Figure 4. Comparison of sentiment score average for Bolsonaro coverage to sentiment score average for “Leader Trade Response” subcategory.
Among news stories concerning the responses of various world leaders to US tariffs published in US and Canada news outlets, articles on Trump’s use of tariffs to interfere with the persecution of former president Bolsonaro presented very negative coverage, with a sentiment score of -3.3 (across 19 articles) compared to the subcategory average of -0.9 (across a total of 242 articles).
Similarly, coverage of Premier Danielle Smith’s response to Trump’s tariffs saw a sentiment score of -2.3 (across 13 articles) compared to the subcategory average of -0.9 (across a total of 242 articles).
Figure 5. Comparison of agrifood sector coverage between US and Canadian outlets
Figure 6. Comparison of commodities markets coverage between US and Canadian outlets
Figure 7. Comparison of corporate response coverage between US and Canadian outlets
Discrepancies in Sectoral Reporting
Discrepancies in Sectoral Reporting
A significant majority of reporting on the agrifood sector was attributed to Canadian news outlets, 123 sources of the total 171, representing almost 72% of all news articles written on the agrifood sector. This was particularly characteristic of coverage on the impacts of tariffs on the canola, dairy, and seafood sectors.
Commodity markets were also dominated by Canadian news coverage, with 362 articles written by Canadian news outlets, accounting for over 81% of total news coverage. The only topic-level exception to this was in coverage of the topic called “Rare Earth Metals”, which saw a slight preponderance of US reporting, 11 articles against the 8 published by Canadian news outlets.
Conversely, a significant majority of reporting on the corporate impacts of tariffs was published by US news outlets, representing over 73% of all reporting for the subcategory. Much of this reporting was done on the responses of major US-based companies, like Amazon, Apple, NVIDIA, and others, to President Trump’s tariffs.
Similarly, news coverage of regional conflicts and security issues saw a preponderance of US coverage, with 104 stories (almost 70% of all coverage) published by US news outlets. This was particularly true of coverage on the topic called “Netanyahu Gaza”, where 14 of 16 stories were published by US outlets and the topic called “Russia Ukraine”, where 43 of 55 news articles were published by US outlets.
Country Sentiment Discrepancies
Country Sentiment Discrepancies
Comparing the average sentiment scores of US and Canadian news outlets on specific topics, the greatest divergence in coverage of news stories was observed in the impact of tariffs on gold markets, where Canadian coverage stood at -0.15 and US coverage at 1.94, representing a discrepancy of 2.09.
The second greatest divergence in coverage of news stories was observed in articles covering the topic called “Ontario’s electricity surcharge threats”, a story which played out during the first few months of the trade war and saw coverage by Canadian news media average -1.84 while US coverage was significantly more negative at -3.65, representing a difference of 1.81.
Similarly, the topic called “Doug Ford’s tariff ad” saw a greater degree of negative coverage from US news sources compared to Canadian news sources, with an average sentiment score of -2.18 across news stories published by US outlets, compared to the -0.58 average sentiment score for Canadian news stories on the same topic, representing a difference of 1.60.
Links to Sources and User Guide
Links to Sources and User Guide
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