Citation

Ana OS. Discourse Soc. 2016; 27(1): 95-117.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0957926515605962

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This is an empirical examination of contemporary US network television news stories about immigrants that is informed by myth and film genre scholarship. A review of a full year (2004) of network news programs determined that two age-old story-types constituted the base narrative of all the news reports regarding immigrant voyages and apprehensions. One ancient story-type, currently manifest as the American Western, occurs when the news story protagonist border patrol agent portrays the American cowboy archetype. A US foundational myth is based on this story-type. The second story-type derives from a journey myth of Inanna, a Sumerian goddess. These two millennia-old story-types accounted for all the network evening news stories immigrant reports. Western news stories rearticulate nationalism, while the Inanna news story contests the nation’s foundational myth. Thus, on this topic, journalists write about immigration to entertain and indoctrinate, as much as to edify.

Language: en