Pakistan Mulls Over Ramping Up Its Media Narrative War

Pakistan is escalating a coordinated media campaign aimed at reshaping its international image, particularly as tensions with Afghanistan intensify and the information fallout from last year’s military clashes with India continues to shape global perceptions of the country.

The government has encouraged journalists to launch new English-language media outlets that align with state messaging, providing a layer of ostensibly independent coverage that reinforces official narratives for international audiences. Pakistan Television, the state broadcaster, has been relaunched with a new digital department specifically designed to counter foreign narratives and project Pakistan’s perspective on global platforms where the country has historically struggled to compete.

Officials involved in the campaign describe it as a defensive response to what they see as an information deficit. During last year’s military confrontation with India, pro-Indian content dominated social media globally, with Indian outlets and influencers flooding platforms with claims, some of which were later debunked, that shaped international opinion in real time. Pakistan’s messaging, by contrast, was slower, less coordinated, and largely invisible to English-speaking audiences outside the region. The New York Times reported on the broader contours of this media push, detailing how the government is now working to ensure that does not happen again.

The campaign’s two primary targets are India and the Taliban government in Afghanistan. On India, the goal is to challenge what Pakistani officials view as a well-funded, deeply embedded Indian media infrastructure that has normalised anti-Pakistan narratives across Western and global platforms. On Afghanistan, the objective is to frame Pakistan’s military operations along the border, and its broader posture toward the Taliban regime, in terms that align with the Pakistani military’s messaging about counter-terrorism and regional stability.

State-backed media are being directed to emphasize Pakistan’s diplomatic role in regional affairs, its counter-terrorism credentials, and its positioning as a stabilising force in South Asia, a framing that contrasts sharply with the image that dominates much of the international press, where coverage tends to focus on democratic backsliding, press freedom violations, and economic instability.

Pakistan’s media landscape has been under severe internal strain throughout 2025 and into 2026. Journalist unions have staged protests over unpaid salaries at major broadcasters. The government launched a new Social Media Protection and Regulatory Authority in March 2026 with powers to order content removal within 24 hours. Multiple TV channels have suffered satellite hacks. Reporters have faced detentions, PECA prosecutions, and alleged abductions. Press freedom organisations reported a 60% increase in violations against Pakistani journalists over the past year.

This creates a paradox at the heart of the campaign. Pakistan is simultaneously trying to build a credible international media presence while presiding over conditions that undermine credibility at home. State-friendly outlets may carry the government’s preferred framing to global audiences, but their effectiveness depends on whether those audiences perceive them as trustworthy, a perception that is difficult to build when the domestic press environment is visibly constrained.

The reliance on state-aligned media also risks deepening the information gap rather than closing it. During the India-Pakistan tensions of 2025, the most damaging misinformation came not from anonymous social media accounts but from mainstream outlets on both sides that ran fabricated stories presented as fact. An American University researcher studying misinformation in South Asia noted at the time that previously credible journalists and major media outlets had published entirely fabricated claims.

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