Analysis of Pakistan Print Media Narrative on the War on Terror

Abstract

This study examines the coverage of the Taliban conflict in four leading national newspapers of Pakistan from January 2014 to July 2014 from war and peace journalism perspective. The theoretical framework for this research is determined by peace journalism and framing theories, while the sample was selected by applying the systematic random sampling method. The findings, based on a content analysis of 821 stories from the four newspapers, indicate that the Pakistani media are inclined more towards war journalism framing than peace journalism framing in their coverage of the Taliban conflict. The two Urdu dailies namely Nawa-i-Waqt and Express have a stronger preference for war than peace compared to the two English dailies namely Dawn and The News International. Consistent with the existing peace journalism scholarship, the findings of this study also show that the newspapers not only toed and supported the official version on this home-grown conflict but also marginalized and undermined alternative voices calling for a peaceful resolution of this years-long conflict. Keywords: War on terror, conflict coverage, peace journalism, national security, propaganda.