El papel de "El País" y "El Mundo" en la creación del mito de Bin Laden

Abstract

During the six later months to the attacks of 11 September against the Twin Towers of New York, El País and El Mundo Spanish newspapers, like other many media, dedicated dedicated a large quantity of space to the figure of Osama Bin Laden. Through the analysis of the texts published by both media between September of 2001 (attacks of New York) and March of 2002 (last actions in mountains of Afghanistan to catch Laden) is verified that a biographical sketch of the leader of al qaeda agrees with the profile of the hero-antihero, designed by authors as Joseph Campbell, Luis Alberto de Cuenca, Otto Rank, Rollo May and others. The newspapers, in their information, chronicles and comments about Bin Laden give us an image or him that, in many occasions, is closer to archetype of the classical hero than to the most wanted terrorist of the world. Thus, symbolic elements of heroic mythology, like the singular appearance, the messianic character, the caves, the horse…appear, curiously, associates to the figure of Bin Laden. 343 text of El País and 125 of El Mundo have been analyzed in this research.