A Comparative Study of Dawn and Jang with Special Regard to Agenda Setting Theory of Press: Ten Years before and after 9/11

The relationship between Pakistan and America has always been a focus of the media of both countries as well as the international media. Even a slight shift in the policies of these two countries for each other is capable of making newspaper headlines and attracting maximum attention of the press of both countries. This study is a comparative analysis of the editorial pages of daily Dawn (English) and daily Jang (Urdu) to explore the agenda setting role of two of Pakistan’s oldest and most credible newspapers, vis-à-vis the Pakistan-US relationship. The research takes into consideration a total of 20 years of Pakistan-US relations by dividing the period into two groups which are ten years before the incident of 9/11 and ten years after 9/11. This understudied period is specifically important because the relations between Pakistan and America during these phases have vacillated between periods of engagements, wherein Pakistan enjoyed the status of the most favoured ally without compromising its regional interest, and the periods of disengagements wherein Pakistan faced sanctions from the US and was left alone to deal with the aftermath of the Afghan war and the War on Terrorism. Hence, this study obtains interesting insights about how the two Pakistani newspapers which represent the Urdu and the English press of Pakistan highlighted the agenda-setting role of the press through the coverage of the issues between Pakistan and US on their editorial pages.

Speaking Silences - Pakistani Fiction Amidst Terrorism & Chaos

Since the disastrous events of 9/11 and its aftermath, the discourse of terrorism has appeared to become the most dominant preoccupations of American literature. Several novels have been composed following the September 11 attacks that deal directly or indirectly with the effect of the event on individuals, both inside and outside of the United States of America. Although these novels often claim to deal with the post traumatic- after effects of the attacks, the Western writers frequently employ Orientalist stereotyping and it appears that after 9/11 this attitude towards Muslims has even hardened and strengthened the old Orientalist discourse by representing all Muslims as terrorists. In line with Edward Said’s:“the East writes back” this thesis shows the novels, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Home Boy and Burnt Shadows, stand as a reaction to this dominant post 9/11 rhetoric and challenge the discourse of colonization from the Pakistani side(whichstands for the East) and welcome decolonization. Edward Said’s Orientalism serves as the theoretical basis for this research. The thesis explores the response of contemporary Pakistani literature in English .i.e. how writers are responding, reactingand relating with the contemporary reality of terrorism, violence, extremism and suicide bombing and the challenges that the existing political and social scenario creates for Pakistani writers and how despotism, martial rule, violence militant extremism and imperial occupation of Afghanistan have placed the Pakistani writer, like his fellow citizens, in the margins, from where writers are now raising their voices andstruggling to regain theirnational identity and create for themselves an individual literary identity. How have the writers not only disrupted the status quo but also challenged and questioned the post 9/11Western discriminatory attitude towards the Muslims. Moreover it reveals the struggle of the authors to dismantle the terrorist label ascribed to the Muslims and post 9/11 stereotyping of Muslims as extremists and religious fanatics.