A Comparative Analysis of Voice of America and Al-Jazeera News Organizations Depicts the Picture of Pakistan

Media is playing a vital role in any country and is being used in many instances to create stereotypes about countries and its people. Today Pakistan is in such a situation where different world media are trying to label Pakistan as a terrorists’ place and linking Pakistan with all terrors. It is mostly American media that is promulgating news against Pakistan and showing the bad picture of Pakistan. According to Bernays (1928, p.153) “Propaganda will never die out”. This article identify the coverage patterns of Pakistan in light of agenda setting, framing and propaganda theories in two leading English language news organizations Voice of American (VOA) and Al-Jazeera. The news from (VOA) and Al-Jazeera is selected for one month February 2014 for measurement. This research endeavours to present an overview of the image of Pakistan as portraying by the both media organizations. This study conducts content analysis of Al-Jazeera and (VOA). Contents of the news were analyzed separately for the study. This study finds out that (VOA) is quite different in disseminating information about Pakistan while Al-Jazeera is neutral than (VOA). In whole month of February 2014 (VOA) covered Pakistan as a failed state against war on terror and has an opinion that Pakistan is a place for terrorist. (VOA) covered 47 (100%) articles in which 33(70.21%) articles portray the negative image of Pakistan 6(12.76%) news articles are categories in positive while 8(17.02%) news articles are neutrally reported. As compare to (VOA) depiction of Pakistan is not dreadful by Al-Jazeera news organization. “Al-Jazeera” covered Pakistan very neutrally and mostly wording and language used in good turn for Pakistan. Al-Jazeera covered 45 (100%) articles in which 25(55.55%) articles are positive, 20 (44.44%) news stories are neutral while there is no negatively framed news for Pakistan by Al-Jazeera.