Dawn, while far from left-wing in a class-conscious sense, was founded by Muhammad Ali Jinnah in 1941 as an explicitly anti-colonial project.
During the early decades of Pakistan’s existence and under martial law, the paper adapted its editorial line in accordance with state censorship, prioritizing institutional survival over journalistic independence like most outlets at the time.
For instance, just before Ayub Khan’s 1963 Press and Publications Ordinance (PPO), Dawn’s chief editor banned editorial staff from joining trade unions and required new employees to sign pledges confirming they would not engage in such activity. During Yahya Khan’s dictatorship, it toed the state-line on key issues, including the devastating war of 1971.
Pakistan’s media liberalization under Pervez Musharraf, which built upon earlier reforms initiated by Benazir Bhutto, is often portrayed as a milestone in the country’s “democratic” evolution, at least by Western standards.
However, the expanded media landscape was neither a purely domestic initiative nor grounded in any real commitment to journalistic integrity. Instead, it was significantly shaped by external pressures—chief among them, the interests of the United States in ensuring anti-American sentiment remained manageable during the War on Terror.
Dawn’s post-9/11 editorial line under this newfound independence has mirrored that of The New York Times and other NATO-aligned media outlets. Its divergence from the Pakistani state has not translated into fidelity to truth, nor to the interests of the Pakistani public.
The newspaper, which refers to itself as “Pakistan’s most trusted outlet for the breaking, latest and top news across the country and the world” has played a leading role in propagating lies and downplaying American war crimes in Pakistan and beyond.
Below, we examine Dawn’s deceitful coverage of a critical chapter of the 21st century—the Arab Spring.
Libya
In the lead-up to Muammar Gaddafi’s death, Dawn promoted Western propaganda that he was cracking down on “democracy.” It claimed that former U.S. President (and war criminal) Barack Obama was being “pressured” to intervene, building legitimacy for NATO’s subsequent aggression in Libya.
Dawn welcomed the murder of Gaddafi by U.S.-backed, sectarian jihadis from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), referring to them as “revolutionary fighters”. This framing ignored that LIFG had been banned by the United Nations after 9/11 for its ties to Al Qaeda. However, that did not stop NATO from partnering with the group to destabilize Libya, while waging a so-called Global War on Terror purportedly aimed at defeating Al Qaeda and its affiliates.
Dawn’s official editorial stance supported the overthrow of Gaddafi. While it did publish an opinion piece that questioned the nature of the Libyan “Revolution”, the article included a standard disclaimer that the views expressed were those of the author, not the publication.
Pakistan’s government at the time defied U.S. pressure, declaring the West’s intervention to be against international law and beyond the United Nations’ authority:
“Tripoli has appreciated Islamabad’s position that the US-led armed intervention in Libya is beyond the UN mandate.”
“Pakistan has so far refused to accord recognition to ‘a state-less Transitional International Council’ as the legitimate authority in Libya and maintains that it still considered Qaddafi’s government as the lawful regime in Tripoli.”Pakistan joins Russia, China, Sweden and Holland in opposing aerial bombardment of Libya.”
By backing Western intervention and sidestepping Pakistan’s official support for Gaddafi, as well as the truth, Dawn wasn’t challenging authority, it was merely bowing to a different one.
Dawn even accused Pakistan of having “double standards” for opposing NATO’s intervention in Libya while supporting the GCC’s military deployment in Bahrain. But this comparison overlooks key differences.
The Bahraini monarchy requested the GCC’s help to quell domestic unrest during a largely peaceful uprising. While Pakistan’s support for the intervention is still condemnable, equating it with NATO’s bombing campaign in Libya is flawed and disproportionate.
Syria
To date, Dawn has never accurately reported on the brutal civil war imposed on Syria by hostile foreign powers. In a 2018 article, the outlet claimed that the United States entered the conflict in 2014 to combat the Islamic State. By that time, however, it was widely recognized across the Global South that the war, from the outset, was a regime change operation led by the United States, Israel, and their regional allies.
Throughout the conflict, the Pakistani state consistently voiced opposition to efforts aimed at toppling the Assad government. An article published by The Diplomat states:
“Pakistan’s pro-Assad stance has corresponded closely with Islamabad’s anti-Western foreign policy tilt. Pakistan has condemned the United States’ willingness to violate Syria’s sovereignty.”
“After the Syrian military’s alleged use of chemical weapons in 2013, Pakistan strongly opposed a potential U.S.-led military intervention in Syria to remove Assad. The Pakistani government argued that Assad’s fall would make Syria a terminal failed state. Pakistan’s emphasis on maintaining the status quo in Syria has strengthened its relationships with Russia and China, the leaders of the pro-Assad bloc in the United Nations (UN).”
In 2011, Dawn published an article covering a protest outside the Syrian embassy in Islamabad, where Syrian nationals demonstrated against the Assad government.
The report criticized the Pakistani state’s perceived indifference to Assad’s alleged “crimes”. It noted that Palestinians and Pakistanis joined the protest—glossing over Assad being a key member of the Axis of Resistance.
The article further quoted Pakistani demonstrators suggesting that Islamabad would not support the Syrian opposition without backing from the United States. This remark is especially ironic, given that it was Western powers—particularly the U.S. and Israel—who were most invested in overthrowing Assad in the first place.
Following the removal of Assad by radical jihadis backed by the United States, Israel, and Turkey, Dawn published a lengthy “analysis” of Syria’s future under the terrorist regime.
Despite recognizing the new president of Syria, Muhammad Abu Al Jolani’s history with Al Qaeda, the article preemptively distanced him from potential future sectarian violence, attributing any such events to “rogue factions” within the broader “rebel” movement.
While the piece did concede that Jolani had been sent to Syria by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it relied on Stanford’s Mapping Militants Project to suggest that he may not have known the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate was also expected to operate as an ISIS extension.
Absent from the report, was any mention of Jolani’s 20+ year career in terrorism—dating back to 2003 in Iraq—a significant omission given its relevance to understanding his ideological roots and operational history.
The article stated that “the sheer speed with which Syria fell suggests the involvement of the U.S.”—ignoring the CIA’s “Operation Timber Sycamore”, through which the U.S. armed and funded terrorists in Syria as early as 2012. It intentionally uses vague language to obfuscate the United States’ long-standing role in the conflict.
Dawn, due to its perceived credibility as a “newspaper of record” in Pakistan, has played a central role in legitimizing unfounded accusations about the state’s alleged institutional support of sectarian, especially anti-Shia, terrorists within its own borders. Meanwhile, it consistently mutes the far more extensive and well-documented record of U.S.-backed terrorism across the globe.
As it continues to posture as an independent voice “exposing” extremism at home, it becomes increasingly necessary to ask why that same scrutiny is almost never applied to the foreign patrons and regional proxies responsible for shaping and sustaining similar violence across the region.
