Evaluating war and peace potential of Pakistani news media: Advancing a peace journalism model

Abstract

This study analyzes the scholarship on the classification of war and peacemaking potential of media in the conflict-ridden milieu of Pakistan. Borrowing from peace studies and the existing journalistic practices in the country, the researchers present and empirically test a new model for evaluating conflict journalism in terms of its escalatory and de-escalatory trends. For this purpose, news stories telecasted in two leading TV channels (PTV and Geo News) relating to seven deadly conflicts were analyzed. We found support for our model—the higher the intensity of a conflict, the higher the escalatory trends in coverage. Patriotic and elite-controlled media produced more escalation as compared to conflict in which journalists were using relatively free media. Despite the dominance of escalatory coverage, we also found some traces of peace journalism in the reporting of conflicts. The study recommends that to promote peace journalism in Pakistan and elsewhere, the local context of a conflict and the journalistic environment should be studied. A mere replication of Western scholarship on peace journalism in non-Western settings would render it an impracticable ideal in real conflict scenarios.