Developing" countries accounted for less than
one third of the news on the AP wire, and this proportion was further
reduced at each editing stage. The wire editors whom Hester interviewed
asserted that reader interest in Latin America and Africa was especially low.
Hester (1974) analysed the flow of news from Latin America to the United
States. The "criminal/violent" category of news made up 14% of what was
sent from Latin America, but 48% of the Latin American news that
Associated Press passed ·on to its client newspapers. Peterson (1981)
studied how The Times of London selects its foreign news. She concluded
that even this elite among newspapers tended to ignore nations of the South
unless conflict occurred there.