Communication for Development in Leading Print media in Pakistan

Abstract

Mass media is an imperative tool to proliferate the concern messages to the heterogeneous audience. Journalism, focusing on the developmental projects, has outlay a constructive analytical groundwork to considerate the governmental policies that are implemented in Pakistani societal systems. This study analyzed the coverage given to the developmental news (health, education and infrastructure) by the Pakistan`s mainstream print media. The news stories were coded with respect to the pre-defined rules and were compared among the news outlets. The content analysis method was employed to understand the number of news frequencies published in the Pakistani English and Urdu newspapers during the six-month period from February 2018 to July 2018. The findings show that the infrastructure news was published more in the print media, as compared to the education and health news. The focus on the infrastructure news might be based on forming the public opinion by the out-going government. Print media can assist and make the community conscious about main factors of ‘development’ that leads to progressive qualities of a nation.