Diversity of News Sources in Climate Change Reporting in Pakistani Press

Abstract

This study examines the diversity of news sources in climate change reporting in the Pakistani press. A longitudinal quantitative content analysis of climate change reporting of five significant climate change-related events such as Earth Summit ((1992), Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto Protocol (1997), Ratification of Kyoto Protocol Globally (2005), COP15 (2009) Copenhagen and COP21 (2015) Paris is conducted. The samples were selected through systematic random sampling technique by choosing every alternate day of newspapers’ publications. A total of 1498 diverse news sources were found in 324 climate change-related stories during the five events mentioned above. The findings of this study revealed that elite sources dominated the marginalized sources collectively in coverage of the three newspapers during the five events. However, the climate change-related event/ incidents represented highly in the reporting of Pakistani press. Further, a thin proportion of mentions of media-related sources such as News agencies and Journalists also found. Thus, this study recommends that similar studies should be conducted on news content of other soft and hard issues in Pakistani press to examine the diversity of sources.