World News is a journalistic field dealing with international or global subjects. This includes war reporting (although this can also be considered national for the media of belligerent nations themselves), summits of international organizations like the UN, and so on. It is also the name of an area in which most major news agencies specialize.

The term was coined in the 17th century, when newspapers first began to appear in Western Europe, but at that point most of them were foreign, as registered by their courants — or headlines — such as “The Daily Courant of London” or “The Nieuwe Tijudinger of Antwerp.” By the 19th century, innovations in telecommunication made it easier to publish and spread the news, leading to the founding of a number of news agencies, including Reuters, AFP and Wolff (currently DPA).

In the United States, there is often a blurring of the distinction between world and domestic news, especially since war coverage falls under this category. But there are still some distinct differences between the two: world news is typically more political, while domestic news focuses more on social or economic issues.

In the months leading up to Election Day, fake news sites ran a series of articles that falsely claimed Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS. Despite the fact that these stories were clearly marked as satire, they went viral and generated over a million engagements on Facebook alone. This lesson explores the difference between real and fake news and gives students tools to identify it for themselves.