Abstract
Foreign reporting plays a vital role in mass communication as well as in the disciplines of area studies, political science, history, and sociology. Nonetheless, systematic comparisons of how foreign events are covered by television channels from different countries remain limited, underscoring the need to broaden this knowledge base. This study examines foreign television news broadcasts from the Czech Republic’s first TV channel across three periods: 1989, 2005, and 2021. The objective is to analyze the preferences in coverage of specific countries by a major Czech media outlet. A content analysis was conducted on 1,608 video news reports. The findings indicate that in 2021, the Czech television news prioritized domestic events, whereas international coverage was most prominent in 1989. Throughout all periods, news stories predominantly focused on European countries, with frequent reporting on Russia, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. Notably, reports concerning Russia often referenced the country as the Russian Federation without explicitly mentioning its name. The United States consistently emerged as the most frequently covered foreign country across all periods. The modality of the majority of foreign news items was neutral, reflecting adherence to principles of journalistic objectivity.