Commercial news now narrates events through hero-villain-victim dramatic arcs like fiction does.

Evidence

TV and print news, especially in its commercial iterations, have increasingly taken on the elements of drama; perhaps to compete with the success of dramas, not to mention the booming new genre of reality television, news reporting has become increasingly sensationalized and often includes a hero or innocent victim, an antagonist, and a conflict arising from the interactions between the hero and the villain. The oppressed Muslim woman is the victim in this drama; Muslim men and Islam are the antagonists or villains. The United States figures as the hero who will save the oppressed Muslim woman from her culture. The Oprah Winfrey Show is a fascinating synthesis of news journalism and fictional drama. Winfrey underscores that what she discusses is “true” while relentlessly focusing on personal, tear-jerking narratives with dramatic presentations lifted from the realms of fiction. Ultimately, we must consider television and print news alongside TV dramas because the former, just like the latter, produce their own version of simplified complex representations, with their own consequences for how we perceive Islam. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 525

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels Walter Ong’s and Neil Postman’s theses that media forms reshape the character of public discourse — news as drama echoes ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death.’ — connects to: Cobb’s generic heroism positions the audience as interpellated subjects of commercial fiction. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 527