For more details on this study see Economic and Political Weekly July 1994

Modern-day society relies on the media, an important component of which are newspapers, to disseminate information. In order to perform this role well, the media has to be comprehensive in its coverage. It has to inform the citizenry in an efficient manner on the diverse matters that affect our society. Modern scientific, economic, and social development depends to a large extent on such a diffusion of knowledge by means of the media. Such an argument is often cited in support of the drive for mass literacy in many planning and intellectual circles.

Although the media comprises of radio, television and newspapers, there are two reasons why in our research we chose to concentrate on newspapers only. First, like many other developing economies and emerging democracies like Pakistan, the audio-visual media, radio and TV, is controlled by the government. Consequently, like most public sector owned enterprises, one cannot take this section of the media to be operating according to well-defined market principles. To the extent that they are being run on non-market lines, market preferences cannot be deduced by means of a content analysis.

Second, all academic jobs as well as academic journals too, are in the public sector. Moreover, these journals tend to be very specialized and do not encourage academic debate. As a result, most Pakistani academics publish in newspapers and the few monthly and weekly magazines. The content analysis especially of the editorial/opinion page, therefore, reflects, in some sense, the opinions of the intelligentsia. The debates and opinions expressed on these pages are important to study as they eventually shape our policy agenda. Syllabi of elite training institutes such as the civil service academy where the senior civil servants are trained draw upon the writings on the opinion pages of newspapers. The columnists and writers of these columns are all the main lecturers at such places. It is, therefore, important to determine the areas that this intellectual elite considers worthy of attention. We attempted to determine the extent to which the newspapers fulfil their role of an informant of society and a watchdog for the interests of the people. For this purpose we attempt to develop some quantification of the coverage of newspapers. Such a quantification is an important source for discovering, and informing the newspaper readership on, editorial preferences and decisions. If enough such information is made available perhaps the readers and editorial interests will be better mediated. It is, therefore, hoped that this line of research will be pursued by others and perhaps even on a continuous basis to keep everyone on their toes.

We were able to cover 6 major newspapers, 4 english and 2 urdu but were unable to undertake a study of the newsmagazines. For the selected papers we covered only the more important sections such as the main headline, the opinion page, the editorials and the letters to the editor. Our simple analysis also overlooks another important dimension of understanding newspapers and their contents, that of the quality of the material presented. For example, simple exercises such as the extent to which opinion is well researched and the headline reflects fact and limits sensation, could be done.

The Categorization

We wished to classify the news, opinion and analysis appearing in newspapers into categories that are meaningful. The primary intent of this research was to determine the priority that editors and opinion-writers give to international versus domestic issues. Furthermore, within domestic issues, what weights do they lay on economic, social and court related issues.

Bearing these considerations in mind, we attempted a classification into 5 main categories, international news, current political situation, social news, economic news, and court-related news. International news represents views and events on issues such as Bosnia, Kashmir, Afghanistan, new world order, Central Asia etc. All Political statements and announcements of the politicians in the government as well as in the opposition including rallies and press conferences of all prominent political parties and leaders are classified in the category of political pronouncement. The conjecture is that statements by these leaders are only made for the promotion of their own careers.

Within court decisions also, a distinction was made between those of an economic and a political nature. Since religion remains an important item for discussion in our society, a classification for pieces that focused on religion was also maintained. In ideal circumstances of a well funded research, perhaps all the sections of the newspaper would be classified on a daily basis in terms of the actual space that was devoted to each category. Such a research would be able to develop many more categories and could even assign pieces to multiple categories.

Within these main categories we attempted some form of quality judgements. In the social and economic categories we attempted to define three sub-classifications. In the course of the analysis it appeared that there were too many pieces that were quite full of platitudes like "Pakistan as an Islamic State", "declining moral values", "corruption", "lament on poverty or literacy" "exhorting self reliance" etc. We termed such pieces "conventional wisdom/dogma".

The quality pieces that we were looking for were either investigative pieces on any current economic or social phenomenon, or an interesting facet of government policy or administration as it affected those areas, or analytical informative pieces in the economic and social areas. Pieces that fell into this category were classified into a category termed as "investigative or report of public complaint". Consequently, a factual reporting of an event such as a seminar or a government policy announcement was termed just that--"Factual reporting of a significant event".

The Concerns of our Intellectuals

Our simple content analysis yielded some interesting conclusions. First we discovered that newspaper editors as well as elite columnists and opinion page writers are very internationalist in their perspectives. International events and news receives a lot of coverage especially in english newspapers: about 53 percent of headline space of english newspapers is devoted to the international news and events. It would be interesting to make an international comparison to see if our hypothesis is borne out that we devote an inordinately large amount of newspaper space to international issues.

Second, the easiest approach to journalism appears to be to follow politicians for statements. For english newspapers this is the second most important item of coverage whereas for Urdu newspapers this is the most important area of coverage. A large fraction of our news appears to be made by politicians and their various press conferences and rallies. Politicians and government functionaries do not have to compete for a headline; it is their birthright.

Third, the opinion is quite cliche-ridden with little information or analytical content and very little hard data. The most important reference remains the conversation with an undisclosed source and the author's own past articles. We like to live in comfortable notions without being able to challenge our priors.

Fourth, very little attention is paid to economic issues or court related proceedings. Hardly any reporting of these serious issues in the main pages takes place. Some newspapers have business pages and even a weekly legal page. However, given the gravity of economic and judicial matters, there is no reason to not give them a larger space to them in the more important areas of the paper that we have analyzed.

Fifth, hardly any analytical or investigative work is printed. Issues of public concern or public maladministration do not receive the attention that they merit.

Sixth, in contrast to the other sections of the newspapers, the "letters to editor" column suggests that the ordinary reading public does not appear to share the views of the editors. The letter-writers do not express the same concern for international matters or for all the political pronouncements of politicians. It seems that the people are more concerned with voicing their complaints concerning maladministration, public sector mismanagement, and their experiences with the authoritarian and arbitrary state. They do so in the vain hope that they will be heard. But the fact that no editor/intellectual takes these issues up obviously suggests that these letter-writers are not being heard.

Men of Letters and Generalists

Why is it that our newspaper reflect these biases that alienate them from their readers? Certainly, they are not irrational and are responding to certain incentives. One explanation could be that is easy course is to print international news as it is easily copied from wire services. Politicians statements too make easy copy and keeps the incumbent government happy so necessary for winning those lucrative advertisements and political favors. It is, therefore, more also profitable to print this innocuous international material and that related to press conferences and rallies of politicians. The bulk of the advertisement is that of the government as well as the bulk of the subscription. Moreover, most economic favors such as plots licenses and preferential credit are also doled out by the government. Thus, why reflect socio-economic concerns and perhaps incur the wrath of the most important patron.

Some of the results that we get from our research also may be due to the old McCaulay tradition of creating men of letters of us, colonial gentlemen. This has left a deep-rooted mark on our intellectual as our intellectuals are now more internationalist in perspective. Their love for the aesthetic and the more poetic makes them romantic and fond of truisms. Certainly, as a society, we have placed no premium on the development of analytical or investigative skills. Consequently, it is not surprising that our newspapers do not reflect any such skill. We have been able to develop a simple but meaningful classification for categorizing news, opinion and analysis appearing in newspapers. In ideal circumstances of a well funded research, perhaps all the sections of the newspaper would be classified on a daily basis in terms of the actual space that was devoted to each category. Such a research would be able to develop many more categories and could even assign pieces to multiple categories. The data base that would be developed in this manner would with the help of personal computers and sophisticates statistical packages allow many interesting trends in newspapers to be analyzed.

Perhaps if someone is able to develop this database on a continuing basis we could play watchdog on our newspapers. Maybe in that manner we will be able to reorient our journalistic community from their currently excessively global or internationalist perspective to a keener interest for domestic concerns. In the same manner, such quantification might help to show that we need hard information, evidence and analysis on our society and its problems. Opinion and cliche cannot substitute for such hard work.

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