News Mythologized Two Two-Term American Presidents to Power

Abstract

With US economic and political prowess in the international public sphere dwindling, opportunity for other nations to step up and provide alternative forms of leadership increases. Since it is often said that hindsight is 20/20, it seems natural to look for a moment in history that might have defined direction to the current international state of affairs. Brazil has been a power to watch, especially since demonstrating its tenacity largely due to strong industrial and agricultural exports for weathering global turbulence during the 2008 global financial crisis. News coverage of the candidacies of two democratically-elected presidents deserve particularly scrutiny: former-US President George W. Bush and former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. Adapting Trent et al. (1993)’s study, triangulated analysis of 285 US and Brazilian newspaper accounts from the 2000 US and 2002 Brazilian presidential elections—when Bush and Lula, respectively, were first elected to power—expounds previous presidential candidate news coverage research. It does so through the addition of four categories, namely favored, folksy, campaign practicalities and fear. It also offers insight into media and political nation building through news mythmaking while complementing other cross-cultural comparisons that analyze the relationships among national media practices and presidential elections.