ETHICAL DIMENSIONS OF CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN PAKISTANI MEDIA

One of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, Pakistan, is facing a variety of cases of climate and environmental ethics violations by a number of local and regional actors. Advocacy journalism has the potential to publicize these violations and injustices, stimulating democratic dialogue among the public audience that can eventually push leadership to make eco-friendly policies and raise public concerns on international platforms. The present study critically analyses the advocacy journalism coverage of cases of local and regional climate and environmental ethics violations in almost 8000 editorials in mainstream Pakistani Urdu and English language newspapers over two years and examines the amount of space and priority of coverage given to them. The quantitative content analysis method is used to measure and compare the frequency of sample content in two major categories and two subcategories to determine the role of advocacy journalism in highlighting the ethical violations of climate and environmental issues in Pakistan. In the first case, selected newspapers are argued to give inappropriate coverage on both climate change and environmental degradation issues to their readers. Moreover, the editorial priorities of newspapers in both languages to advocate local and regional threats of climate change are mainly jumbled and therefore misleading to the readers. In conclusion, results reveal that both state and mass media are non-adherent to different articles of UNESCO’s Declaration of Ethical Principles in Relation to Climate Change. The final analysis suggests that Pakistani advocacy journalism is equally responsible for present climate change woes of the country and hence - instead of being part of the solution - has become part of the problem.