Reporters, most likely influenced by the culture in which they live, shape their reports around stories that are as old as the written word. These ancient characters and plots are often relied upon to provide familiar structures and context to unprecedented events. With this in mind, a quantitative and qualitative content analysis was used to examine coverage of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor appearing in the New York Times, from December 7, 1941, to July 7, 1942. A sample of 432 articles was selected from the population, representing 20.78 percent of the 2,078 articles recovered. The quantitative study was based on comparing the narrative forms found in news articles to those found in myth. This morphology was used to measure the resemblance between the narrative structures of myth and news. Jack Lule's Seven Master Mythsserved as a basis for the myths examined and their narrative structuring, while Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktaleinspired the comparison of forms. The qualitative analysis focused on a close reading of select articles.
The attack was initially discussed in terms of the Flood myth, but was later put into terms of the myth of the Hero. The Hero, the Other World, and the Scapegoat myths were the most numerous, while the Flood and Hero myth were the most prominent. Those who dissented against the government and commanders of U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor were portrayed as Scapegoats while the Japanese were discussed as Tricksters. Foreign lands were often discussed in terms of the Other World myth. The results of this study are only applicable to the population of articles; however, one observation that emerged contradicts an assumption of previous qualitative researchers. Myth was most often associated with hard-news stories rather than soft-news stories, which contradicts the notion that soft news is a more fertile breeding ground for myth. This, however, could be due to the large number of hard news articles found in war coverage. War censors and Times'correspondents played powerful roles as mythmakers. Functions of myth were found in 23.8 percent of the 432 articles examined.