INFORMATION WAR MEDIA A VICTIM OR A TOOL?

• A quantitative analysis of a cross section of newspapers to measure the thrust, importance, and space given to the Kargil crisis.
• To systematically content-analyze qualitatively to look at biases and slants and the extent of positive, negative and neutral coverage and relative importance to various issues.

Time Band:

• Ten weeks [Mid May to July End 99]

Languages covered:

• English, Hindi, and Urdu.

Sample Size:

In all 301 issues of 17 mainstream Indian newspapers comprising Hindi, Urdu and English languages and 150 issues of each of the three US and British dailies and about 150 dispatches of select news on Kargil from three Pakistani newspapers downloaded from internet were included. Besides six magazines, four Indian and two international comprising in all 60 issues were also included in the study. The data provides some interesting insights about the coverage both qualitative and quantitative.

In all, 751 issues were analyzed.

Limitations of the present study :

Pakistani papers turned out to be the proverbial Achilles` heel. Despite our best efforts, we could neither buy newspapers from any source in India, nor the Press Attaché in the Pakistan high commission was of any help. We tried to get through the Army sources, but the reply was that the coverage is highlighted, the moment the newspapers are received and obviously what is highlighted can`t be shared. The Internet proved another mirage at least for sometime as far as reaching Pakistani sites were concerned. However, good luck prevailed and in the month of July we were able to access the Pak official site, which has a variety of fare. The site has Government`s propaganda agenda, select opinionated articles and editorials from two newspapers, viz., The Nation and The News, select reproduction of articles, highlights from articles of Indian journalists appearing in Indian newspapers, and select articles from other overseas newspapers especially the US and the British. There is no gainsaying the fact that only those articles were included which were critical of the Indian Government, policy or "losses" suffered at the front. Since we did not have access to full newspapers, we restricted our analysis to qualitative only.

For the US and the British newspapers, both Internet and copies of newspapers, whichever easily available were used.

MAJOR FINDINGS, TRENDS AND OBSERVATIONS
(Quantitative Analysis)

Space