Three U.S. networks' (ABC, CBS, and NBC) international news coverage of South Korea

Both negative news perspective and economic perspective attempt to explain the pattern of foreign news coverage. Negative news perspective argues that news coverage of Third World countries focuses mainly on negative news such as conflict/crisis-oriented news. Economic perspective emphasizes that economic status of a country, not the country's or the region's image, determines Western media coverage of that country. Based on economic perspective, the world system theory views the world as a hierarchical structure: core, semiperiphery, and periphery nations. In the world system, economic status of a country is classified by economic power which can be explained by economic indicators such as GNP, GDP, and foreign trade. In the world system, mass communication across national borders can be located as part of the structural flows. Therefore, these hierarchical positions among nations in the world system have resulted in disproportional quantity and quality of news coverage for developing and underdeveloped countries.

Although negative news perspective has well been documented, it is hard to explain Western news coverage of all Third world countries. Thus, studies from the economic perspective suggest that the negative news perspective might not be as prevalent as has been thought in determining Western news coverage of Third world countries, especially of developing countries with great economic growth. According to world system theory based on economic perspective, the rise and fall of a country's economic power cause movement with in world system consisting of core, semiperiphery, and periphery.

As a result, the change of a country's economic power influences the national status of the country in the world system, the change of the country's national status influences overall quality and quantity of the country's news coverage by the Western media. However, the changes of news coverage will be more manifest in the long-term period than year by year because the growth rate of a country's economy continues to fluctuate. This would be seem to be true especially for developing nations with great economic growth, where economic progress and economic news would be prime topics for Western news media.