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.

Can autocratic governments influence foreign media? This study finds that political pressures from autocrats can motivate the media in democracies to tone down their negativity. Exploiting China's sudden expulsion of American journalists in March 2020, I show that US news outlets targeted by the expulsion adopted a more positive tone toward China in their subsequent coverage, compared to outlets that were not targeted. Further analyses confirm that the observed pattern is not due to unexpelled outlets presenting more negative coverage of China, and that the expulsion has similar chilling effects on media outlets that could have been affected. The findings highlight the overt threats autocracies pose to media freedom, a fundamental pillar of democratic societies.