Media Portrayal of a Civil Rights Movement: Perspective of Pakistani Journalists

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study analyzes the perspectives of journalists on the reporting of a civil rights movement known as Pashtun Tahafuz Movement in the Pakistani media. The movement was started by the people of tribal areas to demand an end to the existing state policies on the US-led “war on terror” amidst calls for institutional reforms in the region. The study borrows from the existing scholarship on the media representation of social movements and utilizes the protest paradigm as its theoretical framework. Through content analysis and detailed interviews with journalists, the study found the civil rights movement is mainly reported in unfavorable terms in the leading media outlets. While sharing their perspectives on this particular treatment, the journalists believed that the media was tightly controlled by the government to blackout the movement from the mainstream media. Moreover, the organizational and personal opinions of journalists also influenced the negative portrayal. Though the social media has provided alternative avenues to the movement’s activists to speak out against the state’s policies, the journalists feared that even this limited freedom would not last longer in the face of some upcoming legislation aimed at controlling the country’s social media.