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

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