Foreign Lens

Who we read

Every source publishes in a language other than English, except in the Pacific Islands, where there is little non-English news online. For each country we pick one big, loud, mass-market outlet: the local equivalent of the Daily Mail, Fox or Bild. It isn’t the most accurate view of a country, but it’s the one most people there are fed, so it’s the best guide to how a country will react.

Each outlet’s take is labelled as that outlet’s take, never as what its country thinks.

Problems to fix

Outlets we couldn’t read properly, worst first. Blocked means the site refused us (403); rate-limited means it asked us to slow down (429); empty means the page had no readable text (paywall, video or a JavaScript-only site). Figures cover every article we’ve tried.

OutletProblemLatest error
Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes
New Caledonia		 Read 9 of 13, 2 blocked, 2 empty or paywalled extracted text too short (0 chars)
2026-10-04 14:09 UTC
Mosaïque FM
Tunisia		 Read 0 of 4, 4 empty or paywalled extracted text too short (0 chars)
2026-10-04 16:10 UTC
Jornal de Angola
Angola		 Read 4 of 8, 3 blocked, 1 empty or paywalled extracted text too short (0 chars)
2026-10-04 14:59 UTC
Dainik Bhaskar
India		 Read 9 of 12, 3 empty or paywalled extracted text too short (0 chars)
2026-10-04 14:22 UTC
Guancha (观察者网)
China		 Read 5 of 8, 3 other error URLError: <urlopen error _ssl.c:990: The handshake operation timed out>
2026-10-04 16:11 UTC
Maliweb
Mali		 Read 2 of 5, 3 blocked HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden
2026-10-04 13:39 UTC
Prothom Alo (প্রথম আলো)
Bangladesh		 Read 4 of 7, 3 empty or paywalled extracted text too short (0 chars)
2026-10-04 14:22 UTC
Pacific Daily News
Guam (US territory)		 Read 4 of 6, 2 blocked HTTPError: HTTP Error 401: HTTP Forbidden
2026-10-04 14:10 UTC
The Guam Daily Post
Guam (US territory)		 Read 1 of 3, 2 rate-limited HTTPError: HTTP Error 429: Too Many Requests
2026-10-04 15:27 UTC
Thairath
Thailand		 Read 3 of 5, 2 empty or paywalled extracted text too short (0 chars)
2026-10-04 12:55 UTC
Republika
Indonesia		 Read 10 of 12, 1 not found, 1 other error URLError: <urlopen error [Errno -2] Name or service not known>
2026-10-04 14:10 UTC
Euronews (French edition)
France		 Read 5 of 7, 2 blocked HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden
2026-10-04 13:56 UTC
Le Parisien
France		 Read 0 of 2, 2 blocked HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden
2026-10-04 12:48 UTC
Clarín
Argentina		 Read 0 of 2, 2 empty or paywalled extracted text too short (0 chars)
2026-10-04 12:55 UTC
Al Arabiya (العربية)
UAE (Saudi-owned, pan-Arab)		 Read 0 of 2, 2 blocked HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden
2026-10-04 16:10 UTC
Alrakoba (الراكوبة)
Sudan		 Read 0 of 2, 2 blocked HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden
2026-10-04 14:59 UTC
Africaguinee
Guinea		 Read 2 of 4, 1 blocked, 1 empty or paywalled extracted text too short (0 chars)
2026-10-04 15:18 UTC
Turkmenportal
Turkmenistan		 Read 2 of 4, 2 not found HTTPError: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
2026-10-04 13:33 UTC
Tribunnews
Indonesia		 Read 5 of 6, 1 blocked HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden
2026-10-04 15:17 UTC
VnExpress
Vietnam		 Read 3 of 4, 1 blocked HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden
2026-10-04 14:10 UTC
Sin Chew Daily (星洲日报)
Malaysia		 133 headlines found, none relevant enough to read yet search: KeyError: "no search name for Iran in 'zh', and no feed"
2026-10-04 15:04 UTC
Tuổi Trẻ
Vietnam		 Read 0 of 1, 1 empty or paywalled extracted text too short (0 chars)
2026-10-04 16:11 UTC
Yeni Şafak
Türkiye		 Read 3 of 4, 1 empty or paywalled extracted text too short (0 chars)
2026-10-04 16:10 UTC
G1 (Globo)
Brazil		 Read 5 of 6, 1 blocked HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden
2026-10-04 13:56 UTC
Al Rai
Kuwait		 Read 0 of 1, 1 empty or paywalled extracted text too short (0 chars)
2026-10-04 16:11 UTC
Carta de Moçambique
Mozambique		 Read 0 of 1, 1 blocked HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: HTTP Forbidden
2026-10-04 16:11 UTC
Newsmada
Madagascar		 Read 0 of 1, 1 blocked HTTPError: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden
2026-10-04 16:11 UTC
Etilaatroz
Afghanistan		 20 headlines found, none relevant enough to read yet search: IncompleteRead: IncompleteRead(109748 bytes read)
2026-10-04 15:18 UTC

Pacific

Most Pacific Island press is online only in English, so for Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, the Solomons, PNG, Palau, the Cook Islands and Guam we read English-language local outlets: the one exception to the non-English rule. Nothing usable was found for Kiribati, Tuvalu, Nauru, the Marshall Islands or Micronesia. 32 in use

Asia

44 in use

Europe

31 in use, 5 tried and set aside

Nordic countries

6 in use

Anglosphere

A contrast group: the English-speaking world’s own loud press, the second exception to the non-English rule. Any lens about one of these countries leaves that country’s own outlets out. 12 in use

Americas

13 in use

Middle East

21 in use, 1 tried and set aside

Africa

34 in use

Baltic states

5 in use

Former Soviet Union

21 in use, 2 tried and set aside

Muslim-majority countries

A set that overlaps the regions above. These are mass-market outlets in Muslim-majority countries, not a single “Muslim view”. 61 in use, 1 tried and set aside

How articles are found

For each outlet we search Google News, in that outlet’s own language edition, for the country being watched. If Google indexes an outlet badly, we read the outlet’s own tag or search page instead. An AI model screens the headlines and drops sport, travel and passing mentions. The rest are fetched from the publisher, translated with the tone kept intact, and linked back to the original.