Daily News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of Journalism

* Daily News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of Journalism. Jack Lule. New York and London: The Guilford Press, 2001. 244 pp. $17.95 pbk. This lucid and compelling study of news as essential stories that provide models for social life and human behavior builds on and contributes to scholarship that treats news as narrative, as storytelling, as symbolic and cultural expression. Specifically, Lule, who is professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Communication at Lehigh University, has studied the language of news, looking for meaning and finding that "ancient myths are told in the news stories of today. " Many readers will see how Lule's study connects to cultural studies generally and to the scholarship, ideas, and essays of Elizabeth Bird and Robert Dardenne, James Carey (including his edited volume, Media, Myths, and Narratives), Richard Campbell, Paul Heyer and others, as well as that of Kenneth Burke. His research frame and his major theme are significantly informed and shaped by the work of several major scholars of myth, including Sir George Frazer, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell, but especially the work of Mircea Eliade. But Lule also nicely makes effective use of his own reporting experience, which also informs the study. In a discussion of a piece he did at the Philadelphia Inquirer in the early 1980s, Lule readily admits that had someone back then described that article as a modern retelling of a classical myth that he "would have snorted with loud derision. " But that was because he did not have a model for understanding the social role of news, he says, and he did not understand the connection between news and storytelling, including connections in form and theme to myth, legend, and folklore. He understands that journalists today may still snort at his claim to a news-myth connection: "Chortling and disowning, however, may not be a bad start," he writes. "At least a conversation will be under way. " On his side of the conversation, Lule takes some care in defining myth and in emphasizing that in comparing myth and news he is not saying that news consists of untrue stories. Far from it. News, he declares, consists of "the great stories of humankind for humankind" and myth "is best conceived as a sacred, social story that draws on archetypal figures to offer exemplary models for human life. " He explains how his extensive review of news stories led to his identification of seven "eternal stories" or myths that regularly appear in the news. These seven master myths that Lule says "guide the news stories of today" are the Victim, the Scapegoat, the Hero, the Good Mother, the Trickster, the Other World, and the Flood. Lule persuasively demonstrates just how these myths are given contemporary expression by using close textual analysis and a case study approach to examine New York Times coverage of the terrorist killing of Leon Klinghoffer (the Victim), the death of Black Panther Huey Newton (the Scapegoat), Mark McGuire's quest to break Roger Maris's homerun record (the Hero), Mother Teresa over a thirty-year period (the Good Mother), boxer Mike Tyson's trial and conviction for rape (the Trickster), Haiti after the return of Aristide 1994 (the Other World), and Hurricane Mitch's devastation through Central America in 1998 (the Flood). …