ABSTRACT
THE study of international news coverage within the United States and the flow of international news worldwide has yielded a rich body of literature describing the amount of news present from various countries in various content categories, and hypotheses have been tested about various influences on international news (for example, Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Gerbner & Marvanyi, 1977; Hart, 1966; Hester, 1971; Hicks & Gordon, 1974; Lent, 1977; Östgaard, 1965; Sande, 1971; Semmel, 1977; Smith, 1971.) A common finding has been an emphasis on bad news (for example, Bergsma, 1980; Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Kaplan, 1979; Larson, 1979; Lent, 1977) but there is little theory available to explain why this should be true.
