Nippon Steel's $14.9 Billion Deal for U.S. Steel

The plaintiffs here are the two companies themselves. Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel's joint statement, quoted directly in the coverage, and the lawsuit that followed argue the administration reached its decision before a genuine security review and used the process to win a labor union's support ahead of the election.

The same lawsuit anchors the reporting here: the companies allege the decision was political rather than based on a security review. The coverage also carries U.S. Steel's own chief executive, quoted calling the decision corrupt, and reporting that frames the block as a response to union and electoral pressure.

The word used here holds across the arc: the earliest coverage of the review, the litigation that followed the block, and the closing-day report default to the same term for the transaction.

The coverage here uses a few different words for the same transaction along the route -- a sale, at points a merger. By the time the transaction actually closes, the coverage describes what changed hands directly: shares delisted, and the company folded in as a subsidiary of its buyer.

No cluster in the sampled coverage here was annotated as reporting the union's position once the deal closed.

The union's own statements anchor the coverage both before the deal's final terms and after the close. Once revised terms became public, the union's release argued Nippon had not dropped its ownership demand and pointed again to the company's trade-law record; once the deal closed, the same union said it was ready to act in full force if retirement or health benefits came under threat.