WAR AGAINST TERRORISM IN THE TRIBAL AREAS OF PAKISTAN: A STUDY OF NEWS COVERAGE AND THE CHALLENGES FACED BY THE WORKING JOURNALISTS

Abstract

War against terrorism is not a new phenomenon. However, the tragic even of Sept. 2011, 2001 occurred in New York, USA, brought Pakistan into a very important country for reporters, correspondents & journalists of national and international media organizations. In this war people’s dependency is increased to its maximums while gathering and dissemination of information process became highly challenging job for media news reporters who have never reached to the conflict areas for on-spot coverage of events. This research paper aims at to investigate the whole phenomenon that includes normative set-up of the tribal people, geographical mosaics of the tribal areas, nature of a complex war against terrorism, Pakistan’s policy against the Afghan Taliban and the activities of different terrorist groups named as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The work is done in form of case study related to bring the facts on surface to the war-zone media coverage. Exploring the nature of challenges and hardships faced by the working journalists, especially the correspondent is the core of this research paper. The work concludes that covering war events objectively is a highly challenging job to the extent of life threats from different warring groups. It also concludes that news reporters with higher experience have higher level of life threat.