Pakistani Newspapers on Peace Talks with Tahrik e Taliban Pakistan

Abstract

Negotiations between two parties always have newsworthiness. Results of the negotiations can be strongly influenced by the media coverage. Pakistan's government was also involved in peace negotiation with Tahrik e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) during January and February 2014. It was the most discussing issue in Pakistani media at that time. The aim of this research is to analyze the editorial policy of three Pakistani English language newspapers; Dawn, Nation and The News to check their favorable or unfavorable behavior regarding peace talks during January and February 2014. Agenda setting, priming and farming theories were used in this study. Qualitative content analysis method was used in this study to analyze the editorial policy of these three newspapers. Findings revealed that all these three newspapers gave significant coverage to the peace talks issue but Nation gave more coverage to the issue. Findings also revealed that Dawn and The News, most of the time showed neutral behavior but tilted towards unfavorable position regarding peace talks. Nation showed strongly unfavorable behavior regarding peace talks. So it is concluded that all these three newspapers were mostly against the peace talks and government and media were not on the same page on the issue of peace talks.