A study analyzed the coverage by 15 American newspapers of a single foreign news story, the assassination of Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme on February 28, 1986. Issues of the newspapers for the first week after the murder were examined and total coverage of the event, measured in number of words, was calculated for each paper. In addition, the study sought to assess the need for background information in stories from Sweden by examining how frequently that country was covered in the American press during 1985. Data revealed that all of the newspapers included in the survey contained at least some material regarding Palme's assassination. However, the results also suggested that more information providing context and explanation is needed when a story is set in a country geographically and culturally distant from that of a newspaper's readers. (DF)