AGNIESZKA STĘPIŃSKA: ‘Geography of news’ and foreign news selection criteria

The aim of the paper is to outline the characteristics of foreign news published or broadcast in various media. The main objective is to determine which countries and regions feature in foreign news and to highlight similarities and differences in patterns of media coverage. The factors that affect the scale of media attention given to foreign events are discussed. Two trends are referred to: globalisation and regionalism. On the one hand, one may observe a significant amount of attention devoted to ‘core’ countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, or Russia. On the other hand, geographic proximity between the country in which an event takes place and the country where the event is covered is a strong determinant of international news coverage. The paper offers conclusions drawn from a meta-analysis of comparative studies on international news coverage, including an international project entitled Foreign News on TV (2007-2013). The author participated in that project, collecting and analysing content from Polish news media, as well as conducting an international comparative analysis.

Keywords: foreign news, geography of news, news selection criteria, news media, comparative studies