As Yglesias notes, our elite media's coverage of foreign leaders and nations is an insider's game. Foreign leaders are dubbed good guys or bad guys based on the interests of certain elites, and then unrelated things they don't actually much care about are used as justifications for those positions.
The degree to which our press is a part of this is actually incredibly shocking, especially in the post-9/11 era.
...adding, a comparison of media coverage of Peru's Fujimori and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez would provide an interesting case study.
