*Abhijit Mazumdar & Catherine A. Luther
Abstract:
This study examines the U.S. press coverage of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan before and after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and explores if the main frames provided in the stories were in line with shifting U.S. foreign policy interests. This study analysed news stories from The New York Times and The Washington Post with the two identified time frames, using the Indexing theory. Indexing lays out that media in a country emphasises on the foreign policies of its own government in international reporting. The study also used framing as a theoretical construct as it sought to study news frames about the Kashmir dispute in the U.S. press. The study was conducted at two levels: story level and source level. A coding sheet was used to code 270 news stories from the two time frames. Findings indicate that there were no significant differences between the two time frames in framing the cause of dispute and its solutions. The stories gave a balanced account of the dispute at the story level. Significant differences, however, were found in source usage between the two time frames. Authors attributed the difference in source usage to the changing security situation in Kashmir with military officials being quoted more significantly during the pre-9/11 era due to Kashmir being secured by the Indian military. Similarly, non-governmental representatives were quoted more significantly in the news stories to introduce neutral voices about the conflict in the pre-9/11 era.
Keywords: India, United States, Kashmir, indexing, media