Editorial Salience and Topic Coverage of the “War on Terror”: Revisited for the Post-Withdrawal Era

Abstract

In this paper, the study analyzed editorials from The New York Times (NYT) and Pakistan's Dawn, between 2001 and 2010. Of 181 NYT and 207 Dawn editorials relevant to the “War on Terror,” the study looked at how much attention each paper gave five topic areas: Al-Qaida, the Afghan Taliban (AT), Pakistan, the U.S. and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). To ask whether topic and newspaper were linked, a chi-square test of independence was applied. The results show that topic and newspaper were strongly related (χ²(4, N = 388) = 34.01, p < .001, Cramér's V = .30). Dawn tended to write about the TTP; the NYT tended to write about Al-Qaida. And each paper tended to focus on different threats. In this paper, the study considers the findings from two decades ago in relation to the U.S. pullout of Afghanistan in 2021 and the U.S.-Pakistan Counterterrorism Dialogues since 2023. Taken together, the findings suggest a ranking of threats in the editorials. Both media outlets tended to worry more about threats at home than overseas. In many ways, this ranking reflected the political and media agenda in Pakistan at the time. Between 2011 and 2025, the study did not analyze editorials. But using material from U.S.-Pakistan diplomacy, the paper considers whether patterns in the editorials might still inform thinking about today about threats in that period. Where the study draws on external material, this is made clear.