This study aims to explore how U.S. news media represents international issues. This study examines how the Associated Press and the New York Times cover foreign events, and what and how many news sources they use. In addition, this study examines which country's news stories are more relevant to the U.S. For this purpose, the study examines 582 international stories, each of which had over 400 words and which collectively involved 3,204 news sources.This study found that intra-country issues were most frequently represented by the U.S. news outlets. In addition, main topics of foreign news stories were differently represented under three nation categories: core countries, semi-peripheral countries, and other countries. Second, with regard to the use of sources, this study finds that AP and the New York Times used government sources for 47.9 percent of their international news stories. AP depends more on official sources than on non-official sources, while the New York Times uses official and non-official news sources almost evenly. Last, results show that U.S. involvement was lower in news stories on core countries than in news stories on semi-peripheral and other country groups.This study has limitations in terms of data sets and measurement of geographical origin. Nevertheless, this study helps expand mass communication theories and widens the understanding of international coverage. Moreover, this study suggests that there is need to more research about additional media outlets.
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