Health journalism in Pakistan: new horizons among old challenges

Abstract

This study examines the status and evolving practices of health journalism in Pakistan through a qualitative lens. Drawing on the Hierarchy of Influences model, it explores journalists’ perceptions and experiences across three interrelated levels: individual, organizational, and societal. Based on in-depth interviews with health journalists, the findings show that health reporting in Pakistan is shaped by the interaction of limited individual capacity, weak organizational support, and wider political-economic pressures. At the individual level, journalists reported limited scientific literacy, lack of health-specific training, overlapping beats, emotional strain, and uncertainty around the professional scope of health journalism. At the organizational level, the health beat was often assigned low priority, with limited newsroom resources, insufficient training, multitasking pressures, and editorial gatekeeping affecting the visibility and quality of coverage. At the societal level, commercialization, politicization, digitization, audience expectations, and weak science-media linkages shaped how health journalism was produced and valued. The study argues that health journalism in Pakistan is constrained not by isolated professional shortcomings but by intersecting layers of influence that reinforce the marginal position of the beat. By foregrounding journalists’ own accounts, the study contributes to understanding health journalism as a public-interest practice within a Global South media system.