Warmonger or Peacebuilder: Coverage of Taliban Militancy in the Pakistani Press

Abstract

This study examines the role of national media, particularly the leading Urdu- and English-language press of Pakistan, under the theoretical perspectives of ‘war journalism or peace journalism’ in the transformation of the intra-state conflict, the Taliban conflict, in Pakistan. Unlike previous studies conducted on the Taliban, the present investigation, besides examining the agenda-setting and framing roles of the leading press in this intra-state conflict through content analysis, also investigated the structural constraints by employing focus group discussions with journalists who reported this conflict. A content analysis of 832 news stories, published in 481 editions by daily Jang and daily Dawn, indicates that the leading press of Pakistan gave significant coverage to the issue on the front and back pages. Nevertheless, it was dominated by war journalism frames. The focus group discussions revealed that journalists perceived the role of national media as warmonger than peacebuilders and inclined more to war journalism than peace journalism. They identified limited media autonomy, lack of training, absence of official media policy, and the government’s indifferent attitude towards the conflict in the initial stages as some of the major structural constraints in doing peace journalism during the coverage of the Taliban conflict.