Abstract
This article examines the nature of cross-national media coverage of two selected issues including the U.S forces’ withdrawal and re-emergence of Taliban in the context of foreign policy. Testing the Bennet (1990) indexing theory and Pier Robins (2000,2017) media-policy interaction model, the study contently analyzes the news coverage of daily newspapers i.e. Outlook Afghanistan, The News and New York Times on selected issues, with a major aim to evaluate the nature of media coverage on the basis of policy certainty [certain or uncertain policy line of governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States on the issue re-emergence of Taliban and the U.S withdrawal]. The findings of this study show significant policy uncertainty, leading media to criticize Taliban and the U.S in the context of re-emergence of Talibanization in Afghanistan. Whereas the findings also confirm the key arguments of indexing theory as all the selected media, comparatively, framed high the U.S officials and Taliban, who dominate both the issues as key actors. Overall results indicate mixed approach of the selected media as Pakistani newspaper is found adopting a ‘balance approach’ that indicates Pakistan’s policy towards changing political environment in Afghanistan while the Outlook Afghanistan and New York Times were more supportive to the U.S forces withdrawal, however criticized the re-emergence of Taliban.
Highlights
Studying the relationship between media and government is in area of interest for many scholars in the field of political communication including Althaus, 2003; Bennett, 2003; Entman, 2003; Lawrence, 2000 and Robinson, 2000
The above table 5.1 indicates the media coverage of the Afghanistan recent crisis in the context of policy certainty (Robinson, 2000), whereas the findings show that the selected newspapers belong to Afghanistan, Pakistan and the U.S have framed the issue of the U.S withdrawal from Afghanistan and, following, the re-emergence of Taliban more in the perspective of policy uncertainty i.e. 91%
The findings suggest that the selected newspapers i.e. Outlook Afghanistan, The News, and New York Times covered the issue of the U.S withdrawal from Afghanistan and re-emergence of Taliban in different perspectives
Summary
Studying the relationship between media and government is in area of interest for many scholars in the field of political communication including Althaus, 2003; Bennett, 2003; Entman, 2003; Lawrence, 2000 and Robinson, 2000. Focusing on the western democratic system, researchers such as Hallin, 1986; Robinson, 2000 & 2001 evaluate the role of media during humanitarian crisis and interventions, especially the U.S intervention in Latin America, Middle East and Southeast Asia- Vietnam It is not true in all cases that the media will follow the policy guidelines of [western]governments as the canon of journalism and the freedom of press guide the media to generate a critical narrative too, predominantly, the disagreement among elites on any policy issue (Bennett, 1990) provide media an opportunity to frame that particular foreign policy issue or event critically. The New York Times opposed the U.S foreign policy towards Pakistan (Banyan, 2012), which was shaped and adopted in the context of war on terror
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