PRINT MEDIAAND PUNJAB MILITANCY: AN ANALYSIS OF CATEGORY OF LABELLING AND ISSUE OF SENSITIZATION

Punjab faced acute torture3 ofmilitancyfrom the 1980‟s and acquired disastrous shape after the Operation Blue Starled by Indian Army to flush out militants from the Golden Temple premises.Whereas the conflict was continuing among militants and security personals at plains of Punjab, English and vernacular print media were in tussle with each other over covering news related to the occurred violence in Punjab. The English and vernacular media had labelled news related to perpetuating violence in Punjab to people which was created fractured sphere of news world. The media had presented the news covered by ideological contours which was too offended the communities‟emotionsthat were having century‟s old roots. The print media were looked divided while representing violent incidents in Punjab due to theirideological differences.The paper has attempted to understand the meaning of the covered news related to the violent incidents through the ideological lenses by the newspaper and the occurred consequences of that labelled news to society. The paper applied content analysis method, which covers under the qualitative and quantitative research methodology. The paper has solely based on the qualitative methodology. The paper briefly concluded that the role of media is crucial in creating social capital in security. The English and Vernacular print media represented the news related to the violent incidents according to their set ideology, which created fractured views of the sphere in society.