Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

Pakistan is often not what its media says it is. The Pakistan we see on the screens is a country of crowded metropolitans, religious extremism, agricultural products, and a chaotic politics. But these make only parts of the national picture. A certain slice of the picture has mostly been in oblivion. There is a lot behind the obvious that seldom get the limelight of Pakistan’s proliferating electronic media. Almost half of the country (46%) consists of an extremely underprivileged region that continues to live on the margins. Though the biggest province, Balochistan has been unheard and voiceless right from the country’s inception in 1947.This study examines how and why Pakistan’s mainstream electronic media prefers to shut its eyes on critical questions like health, education, and standard of life in Balochistan. The country’s ever-expanding news market has pitched media houses against one another in an intense battle for profit. And the news from an impoverished Balochistan hardly makes a marketable product for the increasingly profit-driven electronic media. The latter has apparently traded journalistic values with profitability in Balochistan’s case. Through qualitative analyses of electronic media content from 2010 to 2018, this paper explores how the electronic media’s constant negligence of Balochistan is slowly creating a humanitarian situation in the province that dwarfs the routine issues of poverty, health, and education. Frustrated yet voiceless, Balochistan is simmering with resentment against anything mainstream. The analysis of the media’s approach towards Balochistan predicts an outcome that no one prefers to have.