The Making of the Philippine President: A Textual Analysis of Mythical Archetypes in the TV News Reports of the 2010 Presidential Elections

Abstract

Journalists will dispute that they work with myths or archetypes in writing and producing the news yet there is evidence that these are used to frame stories so that they resonate with readers or viewers. This critical discourse analysis using Richardson’s (2007) framework for newspapers studied 278 candidate reports out of 644 election-related accounts on the 2010 Philippine presidential election in the news programs TV Patrol and 24 Oras from January to May 2010. The analyses identified the character portrayals of the candidates and were then matched with familiar archetype qualities identified by Lule (2001). Archetypes in the media are potentially powerful communication frames that could impact on the political literacy of the electorate, especially in a predominantly commercial broadcast environment where there is hardly airtime for lengthy discussion of public issues.