Sentiment drifts more negative as World News dominates and sports searches outrun headlines
Overall sentiment stayed Neutral (47.5%) but slid to -0.0492 as World News (44.4% share) and negative-leaning pockets like Crime (-0.3536) outweighed small positives like Sports (+0.0277).
News Sentiment Meter
The collective emotional tone of headlines across major news sources, scored from −1.00 (very negative) to +1.00 (very positive).
Today’s sentiment score is -0.0492 (47.5%, labeled Neutral) across 3,047 headlines, but it moved down by -0.0193 versus the previous snapshot. The distribution tilts negative (501 very negative + 491 negative = 992) over positive (526 positive + 267 very positive = 793), with the biggest volume coming from World News (1,352 headlines; 44.4% share) at a slightly negative average (-0.0094). Source mix also matters: high-volume negative-leaning outlets like salon.com (128 headlines; -0.1165) and dailymail.co.uk (112; -0.291) pull the aggregate down, while forbes.com (76; +0.1077) and nature.com (48; +0.0999) counterbalance.
Sentiment trend
Overall news sentiment across the last 21 measured snapshots.
What the internet is searching for
Top Google search trends by volume. The second bar shows how many of today's scraped headlines actually mention each topic — a big gap means the public is searching for something the press hasn't covered.
Coverage by category
Share of today's headlines by topic.
Sentiment distribution
How today's headlines spread across the emotional range.
Which topics are positive, which are negative
Average sentiment score per category. Bars left of centre skew negative.
The words carrying today's news
Most frequent meaningful terms across every headline analysed.
Biggest move Explosion: Friday night football is unusually covered
The clearest “covered in headlines” spike is "friday night football": it shows 57 headlines of coverage while only registering 500+ search traffic. That is the reverse of the usual gap pattern, suggesting a strong local-news publishing cycle relative to national search demand.
In the category mix, Sports is a modest 4.0% of all headlines (123 of 3,047) and is one of the few categories with positive average sentiment (+0.0277). Even with a small share, that positivity can slightly soften the overall tone, which otherwise sits at -0.0492.
Quiet signal Quiet: big search demand for MLB matchups with near-zero headline pickup
Several of the top Google searches are attracting substantial attention while barely appearing in the 3,047-headline sample. "red sox vs rays" (5,000+ traffic) has 0 headline mentions, and "brewers vs orioles" (5,000+) also has 0, despite both being top-of-list searches.
The same mismatch appears for "athletics vs guardians" (2,000+ traffic; 0 headline coverage) and "liberty vs lynx" (500+ traffic; 0 headline coverage). These gaps are the strongest signal in today’s dataset that public curiosity is outpacing what the measured news headline set is publishing on those specific events.
Sentiment shift Shift: the mood turned more negative since Sep 14
Sentiment moved from -0.0299 on Sep 14 to -0.0492 today, a clear drop in tone alongside a lower headline count (3,245 then vs 3,047 today). The composition also looks more negative in raw totals today: 992 negative vs 793 positive, with 1,262 neutral.
Category sentiment explains where the drag can come from even when overall remains “Neutral.” Crime is only 5.3% of coverage (162 headlines) but extremely negative on average (-0.3536), and Military (114; 3.7% share) is also meaningfully negative (-0.1802). Meanwhile, high-volume categories are closer to flat: World News is slightly negative (-0.0094) at 44.4% share, and Technology is 18.6% share (568 headlines) but negative (-0.0523), which matters because it is the second-largest category by volume.
At the source level, some of the largest counts among the “most negative sources” are substantial: salon.com (128; -0.1165), dailymail.co.uk (112; -0.291), and haaretz.com (111; -0.1174). On the positive side, forbes.com (76; +0.1077) and ajc.com (105; +0.0752) stand out as larger-volume offsets, but they do not fully counter the negative-leaning volumes.
Deep dive Deepdive: World News sets the agenda, word-by-word
World News is the agenda-setting category today with 1,352 headlines, representing 44.4% of all analyzed coverage, and it sits near-neutral but slightly negative on average (-0.0094). Because it is nearly half the sample, small changes in what World News focuses on can move the entire sentiment meter even when the label stays Neutral.
The most frequent words in headlines point to what is dominating that attention: "trump" appears 158 times, with other politics/government-adjacent terms like "white" (43) and "house" (65) also high-frequency. International and geopolitics cues are present as well: "canada" (53), "china" (36), and "world" (43).
The extremes show how a handful of very negative stories can steepen the overall distribution: today’s “very_negative” bucket alone is 501 headlines. At the same time, the top positive headlines show that positivity exists but is thinner by count (267 very positive) than the very negative stack.
Context Context: today is near the low end of the last seven weeks
Today’s -0.0492 is among the more negative readings in the provided history, close to other lows like Aug 10 (-0.0512) and Aug 17 (-0.0499). It is notably below the more neutral patches such as Aug 12 (-0.0325), Aug 23 (-0.0327), and Sep 14 (-0.0299).
Volume is also down from the most recent point: 3,047 headlines today vs 3,245 on Sep 14. With fewer headlines, outlet mix can matter more, and today’s source-level averages show large, negative-leaning contributors (for example, dailymail.co.uk at -0.291 across 112 headlines) alongside positive-leaning but smaller or mid-sized offsets (nature.com at +0.0999 across 48; forbes.com at +0.1077 across 76).
Signal vs noise
Signal — what actually matters
- Search demand is high for Red Sox vs Rays, but headlines show 0 mentions "red sox vs rays" is at 5,000+ search traffic with headline_coverage of 0, a clean attention gap versus the 3,047-headline sample.
- Brewers vs Orioles is another 5,000+ search topic with 0 headline pickup "brewers vs orioles" has 5,000+ traffic and 0 headline_coverage, indicating interest without measured mainstream headline presence.
- Overall sentiment worsened materially since Sep 14 Sentiment fell from -0.0299 (Sep 14) to -0.0492 (Sep 18), and today negatives (992) exceed positives (793).
- World News dominates coverage and therefore sets the tone World News accounts for 1,352 headlines (44.4% share) with avg_sentiment of -0.0094, making it the biggest driver of the aggregate score.
- Crime is small but disproportionately negative Crime is 162 headlines (5.3% share) with avg_sentiment -0.3536, far more negative than most categories.
Noise — loud but low value
- Friday night football looks overrepresented in headlines vs search volume It has 57 headline mentions but only 500+ search traffic, suggesting a publishing-driven spike rather than broad search demand.
- Cubs vs Reds is heavily searched but only lightly reflected in headlines "cubs vs reds" shows 10,000+ traffic with just 5 headline mentions, a smaller coverage footprint than search suggests.
- Indiana Fever interest is strong in search but minimally present in headlines "indiana fever" is 10,000+ traffic with 2 headline mentions in the measured set.
Source leaderboard Who is framing the day brightest and darkest
Most positive outlets
Most negative outlets
Follow the story Best sources on today's trends
cubs vs reds 10000+ searches
- MLB betting tips for Friday: Burns likely to struggle against Cubs ESPN
- On The Horizon: Cubs vs. Reds series preview Bleed Cubbie Blue
- Cubs (Holmes) vs Reds (Burns): 9/18/26, 5:40pm North Side Baseball
indiana fever 10000+ searches
red sox vs rays 5000+ searches
brewers vs orioles 5000+ searches
- Orioles-Brewers series preview: MLB’s best team comes to town Camden Chat
- Kansas City Royals @ Pittsburgh Pirates Odds FanDuel Sportsbook
- Brewers can clinch first-round NL playoffs bye vs Orioles this weekend Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
royals vs pirates 5000+ searches
athletics vs guardians 2000+ searches
Watch list What we're tracking next
- Whether "red sox vs rays" begins appearing in headline coverage (currently 0 with 5,000+ traffic)
- Whether "brewers vs orioles" coverage emerges (currently 0 with 5,000+ traffic)
- Whether the overall sentiment rebounds from -0.0492 toward Sep 14’s -0.0299 level
- Technology tone: 568 headlines (18.6% share) at -0.0523 could pull sentiment lower if volume rises
- Crime intensity: 162 headlines at -0.3536 is a high-negative lever if it expands beyond 5.3% share
The extremes Today's most positive and most negative headlines
Most positive
- +0.88 Which Party Will Win Congress In The Midterms? Polls Show Democrats With Stronger Advantage forbes.com
- +0.86 Dublin’s history: from the great Liberties whiskey fire to the remarkable story of Neary’s pub irishtimes.com
- +0.86 Add to playlistAdd to playlist: the euphoric ‘Bollywood electronic’ of the Twins and the week’s best new tracks theguardian.com
- +0.86 America’s 400 Richest People Have Donated Just 4% Of Their Wealth To Charity forbes.com
- +0.85 Trump’s Greatest Political Boogeyman Really Is Alive and Well in America. If Only He Knew What They Were Doing. slate.com
- +0.84 The Prestigious 50 Best Hotels List Reveals Some New Winners and a Familiar Hong Kong Icon at the Top latimes.com
Most negative
- -0.97 EXCLUSIVEInside Kim Zolciak and husband Kroy Biermann's house of horrors: As son KJ, 15, faces sex abuse allegations involving classmate, watch the shock bodycam footage from before teenager's arrest dailymail.co.uk
- -0.94 EXCLUSIVESuper Bowl halftime show in crisis amid scandal rocking the NFL and fears of Trump retaliation... as insiders reveal Jay-Z's Hail Mary move to avoid catastrophe dailymail.co.uk
- -0.94 Starved, abused, found dead in freezer: Nobody intervened as L.A. County boy suffered latimes.com
- -0.94 Suicide Bomb Attack at Pakistan Mosque Kills 27 breitbart.com
- -0.93 Shock: Street Takeover Thugs Brutally Drag College Girls off Their Porch in Vicious Assault breitbart.com
- -0.93 Living with THE SCALP HUNTER: John Sweeney was one of the most bestial serial killers of modern times - murdering two women and trying to hack his girlfriend to death. Now, as he dies at 69, she recal dailymail.co.uk
Pulse Index works by measuring what language is actually showing up at scale across internet attention streams, then comparing those signals across surfaces. Today’s read combines 3,047 scraped headlines (from 45 sources) with Google search trends and their headline_coverage counts, so you can see not just what publishers are printing but where public searching is outrunning the news (for example, "red sox vs rays" and "brewers vs orioles" both at 5,000+ traffic with 0 headline mentions). Over time, the sentiment history helps contextualize whether a daily dip like today’s -0.0492 is a one-off or part of a broader drift, while the category shares and frequent headline words show where the attention is concentrated and what themes are doing the pulling.