Little weight behind American news report (8)
I believe the answer is:
announce
'report' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'little weight behind american news' is the wordplay.
'little weight' becomes 'ounce' (I've seen this before).
'behind' says to put letters next to each other.
'american' becomes 'a' (common abbreviation - e.g. in organisation names).
'news' becomes 'nn' (I've seen this in other clues).
'a'+'nn'='ann'
'ounce' put after 'ann' is 'ANNOUNCE'.
(Other definitions for announce that I've seen before include "Disclose" , "Publicise" , "Make known publicly or to an audience" , "Declare, proclaim" , "Give public notice to" .)