Pakistan Emerges as a Major Focus of Indian Media’s International Coverage

Pakistan has emerged as one of the most prominent subjects in India’s international television coverage, with recent media research highlighting the unusually large amount of attention devoted to the neighbouring country.

A 2026 study published in the journal Journalism examined prime-time international news on five major Indian television networks and found that Pakistan accounted for 30.8 percent of the international stories in the sample, ahead of the United States at 13.8 percent.

The study analysed 347 international news stories broadcast during prime time across DD News, Times Now, India Today, Aaj Tak and India TV.

Pakistan featured in 107 of those stories, accounting for 30.8 percent of the total, while the United States appeared in 48 stories, or 13.8 percent. China and Israel each accounted for 6.1 percent.

The researchers said the distribution demonstrated a pronounced concentration of international coverage around countries considered geopolitically significant to India.

The research also found that Indian prime-time international reporting was heavily concentrated around geopolitical power and conflict-security themes.

Geopolitical-power stories accounted for 44.1 percent of the sample, while conflict-security coverage represented another 33.8 percent. Together, the two categories made up 77.9 percent of international reporting examined in the study.

The researchers noted that Pakistan’s prominent position in Indian international coverage can be understood in the context of historical conflict, cross-border security concerns and continuing diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

A separate recent analysis of Indian television content has also drawn attention to the frequency with which Pakistan appears in Indian media discussions.

According to an analysis cited by Pakistani media, the word “Pakistan” appeared 423 times across 346 episodes of Republic TV monologues. The analysis has been presented as another indication of the country’s prominence in Indian television discourse.

The two sets of figures measure different things and should therefore not be treated as part of the same dataset.

The 2026 academic study found that negative stories constituted 51.9 percent of the international coverage examined, compared with 38.9 percent positive stories and 9.2 percent neutral stories.

Private broadcasters showed a particularly high proportion of negative international coverage, while the public broadcaster DD News displayed a substantially different pattern.

The researchers interpreted these patterns as reflecting geopolitical relevance, institutional media routines and the competitive nature of television news rather than assuming deliberate distortion by all broadcasters.

The findings nevertheless demonstrate that Pakistan occupies a significant place in India’s international news agenda.

Its share of coverage in the five-channel study was more than twice that of the United States and substantially higher than that of most other countries included in the sample.

The research therefore provides empirical evidence that Pakistan remains a highly visible subject in Indian television’s coverage of international affairs, particularly in reporting centred on security, conflict and geopolitics.