Pakistan’s Stance on War on Terror and its Treatment in the National Press

Abstract

After the 9/11 incident, the U.S declared war against terrorism under the umbrella
of the U.N Security Council resolution. Almost the entire Western World and some
Asian states militarily joined the war. Pakistan also joined the war, extending
considerable military and non-military support to the U.S. At the beginning, there
was a series of protests against the government decision but it could not change the
direction of the government policy in this regard. The situation in the Pakistani print
media was not so different. Both hard and soft news stories appeared in the press
severely opposed the government stance. But when the Pakistani cities became the
victim of acts of terrorism, a sharp shift in the press policy towards the government
stance was observed. This study has examined the Pakistani press approach towards
the government stance on war on terror. The positive, neutral and negatives frames
were applied to analyse the content published in the two dailies — the Nation and
the Business Recorder from 01 March 2008 to 28 February 2009. The content
published in the two newspapers was categorized as hard news and soft news; the
government and private source. Moreover, the study compared the coverage of the
two selected dailies that which one is more supportive to the government stance. It
was found that the press is overall supportive to the government stance and
comparatively the Business Recorder has published more material in favour of the
stance taken by Pakistan’s the government.