Suppression of Pakistani Media in the Post-2000 Scenario (An analysis of Musharraf, Zardari and Nawaz Regimes)

Abstract

This study, “suppression of Pakistani media during Musharraf, Zardari and Nawaz’s regimes in the post-2000 scenario," was analyzed through the prism of Authoritarian and Framing Theories by taking generic frames from Semetko & Valkenburg Model-2000 and some other issue-specific frames. Quantitative and qualitative content analyses with a distinct coding scheme were applied. SPSS Version-21 was utilized for descriptive statistics, variance, and multiple regression tests of the quantitative data with a sampling frame of 2880 of four newspapers. The qualitative data was examined with Nvivo software. Results disclosed that categories revealing media suppression dominated with 1404 (69.50%) items of the total 2020, while those suggesting media facilitation were only 538 (26.63%). The highest media suppression was reported during Musharraf’s era. A relatively less significant difference was observed between Zardari and Nawaz regimes. Results partially supported the hypothesis of significant difference in media treatment by all three regimes