Daily News Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of Journalism (The Guilford Communication Series)

About this book

This compelling often surprising book demonstrates the ways news articles of today draw from age-old tales that have chastened challenged entertained and entranced people since the beginning of time. Through an insightful exploration of hundreds of New York Times articles award-winning professor and former journalist Jack Lule reveals mythical themes in reporting on topics from terrorist hijackings to Huey Newton from Mother Teresa to Mike Tyson. Beneath the fresh facade of current events Lule identifies such enduring archetypes as the innocent victim the good mother the hero and the trickster. In doing so he sheds light on how media coverage shapes our thinking about many of the confounding issues of our day including foreign policy terrorism race relations and political dissent. Winner of the MEAs 2002 Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Technics