Review and Details of "Daily News, Eternal Stories" by Jack Lule

The lit review seems very loosely tied to news stories.  Either or feels like it deserves complete focus.  Much like myself, it seems like he just wants it to work so he can pursue two separate interests.  How is news different than any other medium of storytelling?  Just because, at the time, the industry was booming?

Lule's book attempts (and succeeds) to find examples of different forms of mythology in contemporary newspaper articles.  He identifies them in a section called "Seven Master Myths in the News":

(He provides lengthy explanations of each, conceptualizations as they're called in this kind of academic work, although they're almost all completely self-explanatory archetypes):

The victim

The scapegoat

The hero

The good mother

The trickster

The Other World:  "These stories have large implications for hour our country acts on the world stage." (25)  What he's referring to here is, from an anthropological point of view, the ethnocentric view American mass media uses on the rest of the world.

   

“News coverage does aid and support the goals of the terrorist.”  (57)

Some interesting points.  While I always had a sneaking suspicion this was the truth, I won't pretend I know all that much about how newsrooms work.  “Newspapers can and do freely edit and adapt AP stories—deleting whole sections, adding material for their own reporters, changing language, and rearranging paragraphs.”

Particularly interesting is the way the news depicted recently deceased Huey Newton.  The famous co-founder of the Black Panther party, he was scapegoated by the news and denigrated by these institutions.  The news, in this way, "delegitimized dissent".  The New York Times, in particular:

"1. The Times stories disavowed Newton's life through use of ironic details and characterizations.

  2. They invalidated his significance by depicting him in incongruous, almost humiliating circumstances.

  3.  They repudiated his accomplishments by focusing largely on his criminal record, portraying him as if he was noteworthy only for a life of crime and violence."  (67)

Furthermore, "all 12 newspapers (he analyzed) employed identical themes in their coverage of Newton's death."  (67).  I don't want to give away everything Lule says for free, this is probably infringing on some sort of copy right already, but Newton is cast by the news as not even being able to improve the condition of the area he grew up in.  He died blocks away from where he was born.

Lule uses as much nuanced (textual) analysis as quantifiable (content) analysis, which is refreshing to someone like me.  When I write about this kind of stuff, I want to be able to make preposterous, provocative and humorous points.  The clinical, painstakingly methodological nature of content analysis probably scares the majority of readers away, anyway.  It's hard enough to make academic writing entertaining.