A government claim has emerged that 110 newspapers in Balochistan published nearly 1.2 million copies daily over the past year, while the provincial government issued more than Rs524 million in advertisements in return. But the question remains: where were these newspapers, and who read them?
The report issued by the Directorate of Public Relations Balochistan (DPR) covers the period from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025. According to the document, 110 registered daily newspapers across the province claimed to publish a total of 1,193,040 copies on a daily basis. Surprisingly, the majority of these newspapers are based solely in Quetta, where dozens of little-known, non-prominent, or extremely limited-circulation newspapers also appear claiming thousands of printed copies.
According to the details included in the report, the circulation numbers of some newspapers not only fail to match ground realities but many of them are completely invisible to the public.
The list contains many newspapers, such as Sadaqat International Quetta, Daily Balochistan Lines, Daily Sahafat, Daily Nawa-e-Watan, Daily Great Balochistan, Daily Tameer Balochistan, Daily Aphan, Daily Al-Fajr, Daily Public, Daily Asar-e-Nau, Daily Taza Khabar, Tameer Watan, Akhbar Khabar, which are never seen anywhere, yet even they show thousands of ABC-verified copies.
According to the record, Rs524,443,418 worth of advertisements were distributed during the year. The data shows that dozens of newspapers on this list received millions of rupees despite their real circulation being highly questionable.
In a province like Balochistan, where literacy rates are low, a large portion of the population lives in rural areas, and newspaper readership is limited, the official claim of over 1.2 million daily circulated copies appears far from reality. According to information, many newspapers exist only on paper: no offices, no reporting, no distribution, and no readers are visible anywhere, yet their ABC figures are approved every year without verification.
According to media development expert Saifullah Khoso, the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) is a formal system through which newspapers get their daily published copies officially verified so that their circulation figures can be used in advertising and media policy decisions. However, in Pakistan, these figures are often merely paper claims rather than a reflection of reality and have no connection with the ground situation. Newspapers that have almost no real circulation but still show thousands of copies are commonly referred to as dummy newspapers or USP newspapers.
He further states that when other provinces revised their media advertising policies and started granting advertisements to digital media as well, the number of such newspapers declined. However, this policy has not been implemented in Balochistan, which is why even today a large number of such newspapers still exist, publishing only to obtain advertisements.
Media circles describe this as a “paper media industry,” running on public money. According to experts, this system has created a parallel economic structure of fake circulation and paper newspapers, whose only purpose is to obtain government advertisements.