A large-scale exchange of information between media across national borders is often observed when a global public health emergency occurs. This study investigated the global news citation network in the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic by analyzing the network structure at different levels to identify important nodes and the relationships among news organizations. The results show that COVID-19 related international news flow had a complex and unequal pattern, with a few countries and media outlets occuping a prominent place in the network and three media groups (international news agencies, media in and around the country where the event arose, and regional news aggregators) played important but different roles in disseminating the news. The news flow in this stage was jointly influenced by national traits, the relatedness between countries, and the pandemic emergency with public health risks. From a global perspective, the media of the US, mainland China, and the UK played the most important role in collaboration within the world media system at the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic.