World news is the jargon used by many news media outlets to describe news pertaining to foreign or international subjects. This type of news is generally distinguished from national or domestic topics, which are typically covered by local or regional news programs. This distinction is often blurred, however, especially when reporting on wars involving belligerent countries, or at summits of multilateral organizations that have national representation.
Historically, news media referred to all topics outside of the home country as “world news.” This term was used by early 17th-century newspapers like the Daily Courant (England), Nieuwe Tijudinger (Antwerp), and Relation oder Zeitung (Strasbourg). After the 19th century, new telecommunications technologies like telephone and telegraph allowed these and other publications to be sent around the world more easily and in greater volume. This was the birth of what came to be known as news journalism.
ABC News’s flagship station in New York, WABC-TV, dropped the World News Now brand in 2020 and replaced it with a rebroadcast of This Week, a rebroadcast of Live with Kelly and Ryan, and the syndicated morning show America This Morning. Other network O&Os have similarly chosen to drop the program in favor of local newscasts or other programming, such as KTWO-TV in Casper, Wyoming and WVII-TV in Bangor, Maine, which replaced it with a simulcast of the cable home shopping channel Jewelry Television.
The final few minutes of each broadcast are usually devoted to a “News Now Vault” segment, which shows news clips from the past that relate to or contrast with the current story being reported on. This is often done for the major world events of the day, such as the bombings of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
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