Neil Postman and Steve Powers "The Bias of Language, The Bias of Pictures"

After reading this essay, one will be able to observe that Postman and Powers have a definition for what a stationary picture, a moving picture, and language is.  “A picture does not present to us an idea or concept about the world.” (Postman and Powers, 2008)  Postman and Powers describe stationary pictures as something without a specific meaning.  Stationary pictures leave the audience guessing.  When viewing a picture, one can only assume what is happening without words explaining what is presented.  Moving pictures give people a sense of feeling and offer a real time view at what is taking place.  Language can be biased, non-factual, and mainly used to express an opinion.  Postman and Powers claim newscasts do not report an event as a fact, but as an opinion in order to grab the audience’s attention.  Background noises, background movement, and music, are all tools used by newscasts to grab the audience’s attention.  This is a way of making the audience feel like they are getting urgent and recent news.  Postman and Powers do not believe the newscast broadcast events for what actually happened.  “It is a tendency of journalism in general to communicate on the surface of events rather than underlying conditions.” (Postman and Powers, 2008)  After reading this essay, one may have a different opinion on how future news is presented to them. 

Postman, Neil and Powers, Steve (2008). The Bias of Language, The Bias f Pictures. In L. Gray-Rosendale, Pop Perspectives (pp. 481-489). New York: McGraw-Hill.