From Burhan Wani to Abhi Nandan: A Comparative Analysis of India and Pakistan’s Newspaper coverage of Kashmir Conflict

Abstract

This paper compares the coverage of Kashmir Conflict in four English language dailies: two from Pakistan; DAWN and The Nation, and two from India; ‘The HINDU’ and ‘Times of India’ by employing Galtung’s Model of Peace Journalism (Galtung, 1986; 1998) and Lynch & McGoldrick’s (2005) Two-Sided Conflict Model. The study pursues two research questions; is the coverage of these newspaper war or peace- oriented, and do they report Kashmir Conflict through Two-Party (Pak-India) or Multi- Party lenses. For data sources, seven major recent events; Burhan Wani’s killing (2016), Uri Attack, Indian Surgical Strikes, Pulwama Attack, Balakot Airstrike, and Abhi Nandan’s Capture and Release (2019) were chosen. A total of 56 stories, one lead story and one editorial from each newspaper about every event, were collected. Each story was evaluated according to Galtung’s 19 indicators; nine War, nine Peace and one Neutral, and accordingly categorized. The analysis revealed that DAWN had the highest (46.15%) peace-oriented coverage while The HINDU was second with only 23% peace content. In the war category, The Nation scored the highest (100%) while the Times of India was found second (92.85%). No story could qualify for the neutral category. Overall, the coverage of these newspapers was found grossly (81.13%) war- oriented. Moreover, in the coverage of the Kashmir Conflict, the media succumb to the Two-Sided Model, projecting Pakistani and Indian states as the only legitimate parties while Kashmiris are portrayed as mere passive victims. These newspapers also focus only on visible effects and heavily rely on elite positions. The purpose of this study was to examine how much Peace Journalism–being reasonably advocated throughout the last decade in the Subcontinent–has changed the attitude of our media towards peace reporting.