Capturing the Fourth Estate: Government Influence on US Newspaper Coverage of Foreign Leaders

Governments worldwide seek to influence the stories reporters write. This article examines whether and how the US government shapes the variations in domestic news outlets’ coverage of foreign leaders across time and space. Leveraging data collected from five major US newspapers on more than 1,500 foreign leaders, I find that US news outlets, acting in line with the government’s interests, tend to limit their coverage of human rights violators who are politically aligned with the USA while providing more extensive reportage on those who are not. Further evidence suggests that such biased coverage is at least partly driven by the US government’s selective information provision during press briefings and through press releases. The findings have important implications for how we understand media bias and media capture in democratic societies.