Environmental Problems of Lahore and Their Reporting

Abstract

Today Pakistan faces serious environmental problems despite the laws seeking to protect the environment. The issues are multidimensional involving various actors and institutions that need to act today in order to tackle the looming crisis. In this scenario print media has a vital role in building consensus among different stakeholders including policy makers, NGO's, and the public at large. One cannot deny the integral role played by the news media as it is still the main source of information and opinion for millions of readers and viewers and voters through newspapers, magazines etc. There are hundreds of Pakistani newspapers from the large national Urdu newspapers to the small local vernacular papers. Besides the Urdu-English and Rural-Urban divide, Pakistan media is also divided linguistically with a series of media in vernacular languages, such as Punjabi, Pashto and Sindhi. In this study Content analysis of environmental reporting is done. Daily Dawn and Daily Jang were selected and a comparison was drawn about the quality and quantity of environmental news stories appearing in these newspapers. These newspapers were chosen because they are dissimilar basically because both of these newspapers are prominent print media and contribute greatly towards understanding the trend of environmental reporting in the country. Plus since are in two different languages therefore it provides opportunity for comparison. Eight categories of environmental problems were studies pertaining to Lahore based on their importance and appearance in the newspapers. These categories were Air Pollution, Noise Pollution, Water Quality, Sanitation, Solid Waste Management, Legislative Compliance, Industrial Effluents and Global Warming/ Climate Change. Their frequency (appearance), length, placement and framing were studied. Interviews with environmental reporters and environmental researchers were also conducted. The study has explored that to whether and what extent print media has managed to report on environmental issues with research and follow up. The focus is to evaluate and study the scientific aspects of the reporting in the newspapers.