PRINT MEDIA ON COVERAGE OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN PAKISTAN: TREATMENT OF OPINION PAGES OF THE ‘DAWN’ AND ‘NEWS'

Abstract

This article identifies coverage patterns of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) in light of agenda setting, framing and priming theories in two leading English dailies: The Dawn and the Daily News. The opinion pages of these papers for two months were selected to measure the four variables slant, frame, frequency and placement. The writer conducts a content analysis of opinion pages which include editorials, columns and letters to the editors. The results indicate that these two leading papers covered the political activities of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf differently. Results indicate that Daily News gave huge coverage to PTI as compare to The Dawn. The News published 61 articles on PTI during the two months study period while Dawn published only 14 articles. The language and theme of most of the articles published by Daily News is favorable towards PTA as it published 37 articles in favor of PTI whereas Dawn produced only 3 articles in favor of PTI. The Dawn deals with the same issue in a neutral and objective way. The News devoted 44903 words with the average of 1796 words per article to the particular political party while Dawn devoted 8826 words with the average of 802 words per article on the same period of time. Dawn remained neutral most of the time in language and tone while the approach of the News remained subjective.