Neil Postman and Steve Powers claim in their essay The Bias of Language, The Bias of Pictures, that stationary pictures, moving pictures, and language are all used in different ways in the media, specifically on the news. The news stations don’t use just one of these forms of communication, but a combination of the three, in order to accumulate as many viewers as possible. They state that language is used on the news in three different ways: to describe, evaluate, and infer. But they also point out that it’s important for viewers to know how to distinguish between the three because journalists tend to use descriptions that can be evaluated and inferred how they want it to be perceived by viewers because "all words have connotative meanings."(Postman and Powers, 1992) Pictures only show a fragment of something, without an explanation, and with language, we can better understand a picture because just like language, pictures can be perceived many different ways as well. On the other hand, moving pictures are use more often on the news because Postman and Powers suggest that people are drawn to dramatic events such as fires or earthquakes that are filmed and presented to keep viewers interested in the entire news cast, not just one story. Sometimes, the beginning of the show may give a preview of what is coming up so that a viewer will watch everything before the major story, again, to keep viewers watching. In their essay, these three aspects are explained in a manner that makes news casts seem staged, as if important events that are going on in the city, state, country, and world are a continuous flow of information that must be broadcasted to the world. Is this necessarily true? In my opinion I do not believe it to be a necessity to know these things, so therefore I can conclude that the news is purely entertainment, staged or not, and it draws on the natural human inclination to dramatic events.
Postman, Neil, and Steve Powers. How to Watch TV News. New York, NY: Penguin, 1992
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