The Latin Bias: Regions, the Anglo-American Media and Human Rights

This article by Emilie Hafner-Burton and James Ron examines how the Anglo-American media allocates attention to global human rights abuses. Using data from Newsweek, The Economist, and The New York Times (1981–2000), we demonstrate a striking “Latin Human Rights Bias”: disproportionate coverage of Latin American human rights violations compared to equally severe or worse abuses in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, or the former Soviet bloc. We find that this bias cannot be explained by the severity of repression alone. While proximity to the United States, U.S. foreign policy salience, and transnational activist networks account for part of the pattern, a significant portion remains unexplained. Interviews with journalists suggest additional factors, including historical path dependence and the role of the Catholic Church, but the statistical evidence shows that Latin America consistently received more media attention than other regions. This “Latin Bias” has major implications for the global politics of attention. Policymakers, NGOs, and scholars often draw lessons from Latin America’s human rights experience, but this reliance risks skewing theory and practice. Media-driven imbalances influence advocacy strategies, international aid, and scholarly debates, reinforcing distortions in how the world understands and responds to human rights crises. Published in International Studies Quarterly (2013), this study contributes to scholarship on media, NGOs, and international relations, and highlights the need to critically assess regional bias in human rights reporting.