Negotiating Journalistic Authority in a Saturated Textual Environment: Jessica Lynch, the New York Times, and the Struggle Over the Real - Top Student Paper.

Journalists' authority over the cultural production of truth is increasingly challenged by other cultural players, who offer their versions of culturally significant news stories in an ever-growing proximity to the actual events. This article focuses on the much disputed story of the capture and rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch in Iraq, and examines the ways in which the New York Times negotiated its authority vis-à-vis other cultural texts that lay claim to the story, particularly NBC's made-for-television movie Saving Jessica Lynch, and the biographical novel, I am a Soldier, Too. The analysis suggests that the Times dialectically oscillated between treating other cultural players as the "others" of journalism and as legitimate participants in a shared project of cultural production; between constructing itself as a participant in the contest over the real story and an observer of this contest; and between offering drafts and final records of the story. At a broader level, the article demonstrates the need to see the elite press as neither the other of popular culture nor its equal counterpart, and argues for a possible analogy between the ostensibly contradictory epistemologies of cultural studies and journalism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]