A COMPARATIVE CONTENT ANALYSIS OF THE COVERAGE OF RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN PAKISTANI PRESS

Abstract

Usually, Pakistani newspapers cover minority issues rigorously however with a lot of care. Given the history of violation and misuse of blasphemy laws, the journalists and media outlets generally narrate the issues and mention facts and figures in quote and quote forms. However, during the last few years, with an extreme of human rights violations against religious minorities in Pakistan, the national media has taken up the issue quite candidly and bluntly. This research papers explores and analyses the news coverage of the religious minorities given by top three newspapers in Pakistan namely; Dawn, The Express Tribune and The News International. We have used qualitative and quantitative content analysis to explore and analyze the news coverage of the religious minorities in Pakistan by the selected newspapers during December 01, 2022 to December 31, 2024. Our findings show that all the selected newspapers provided a detailed and in-depth coverage to the issue related to religious minorities such as; attacks on worship places of the religious minorities, the misuse of blasphemy laws, legion based discrimination, social dynamics of the minorities, legal challenges faced by the minorities etc. Additionally, we found out that all the newspapers gave space to the voices raised in favour of rule of law to safeguard the minority rights and religious harmony in the country.