Study finds allies get warmer foreign news coverage

Countries tend to receive friendlier coverage from media outlets based in places that look more like them politically and institutionally, according to a study by Sibo Liu and collaborators. For everyday readers who build views of foreign markets and governments through headlines, the finding points to a simple risk: news tone may reflect geopolitical alignment as much as events on the ground.

The researchers analyzed 1.4 billion news articles from 55,240 media outlets across 176 countries, according to the study. Their central finding was that the average tone of coverage becomes more positive as the institutional similarity between the reporting country and the country being covered increases.

Institutional similarity refers to how closely countries resemble each other in their political and governing systems. In plain terms, media in countries with similar institutions tend to write more favorably about each other than media in countries with less similar systems, according to Liu and his co-authors.

Political distance shows up in the news

The study also found that coverage of political adversaries is especially negative in autocratic countries. Autocratic systems are governments where political power is concentrated and democratic checks are limited.

State-controlled media showed the same pattern in both autocratic and democratic countries, according to the study. State-controlled media refers to outlets that are directed, owned or heavily influenced by the government, rather than operating independently.

The findings help explain why audiences in the U.S. and Europe may see sharply different coverage of countries that both face criticism over repression and human rights abuses. Iran and Saudi Arabia are often viewed negatively by outside audiences, but Saudi Arabia can receive a somewhat more favorable treatment in Western public discussion because it is a long-running ally of the U.S. and Western Europe, the commentary around the study argues.

The same discussion points to Saudi Arabia’s heavy spending on sportswashing, a term used for efforts to improve a country’s image through major sports investments. The argument is that alignment with Western governments and high-profile image-building can shape how a country is perceived, even when human rights concerns remain.

Democratic backsliding changes the tone

Liu and his collaborators also examined countries experiencing democratic backsliding, a term for the weakening of democratic norms and institutions. The study cites Poland and Hungary during the 2010s as examples.

In those cases, coverage of other democratic countries turned more negative, especially among state-controlled outlets, according to the study. That suggests changes inside a country’s own political system can alter how its media portrays foreign democracies.

The broader feedback loop is straightforward: more negative reporting about a country can worsen public opinion toward it, and weaker public opinion can give politicians more room to take a tougher stance. The study’s findings do not say that media tone alone causes conflict, but they show how coverage patterns can reinforce political distance.

The commentary closes by invoking Austrian writer Karl Kraus, who argued that diplomats could spread falsehoods to journalists and then come to believe those claims once they appeared in print. Liu and his co-authors provide data-driven evidence for a related point: international news is not only about what happens abroad, but also about who is doing the reporting.

This story draws on original reporting from Klement on Investing.