Chapters 37 & 38

“ Television Transforms the News” by Mitchell Stevens

And

“Two Cultures- Television versus Print”

By Neil Postman & Camille Paglia

TV gave the news a face

Companies didn't know how to fill the screen

Images of the "talking head"

Limited coverage of events

Beginning of Bias? Ethics of

Objectivity vs. Corporate Ownership and Sponsors

Political Pressure

Issues?

Time Limitations Appearance Political oversimplification/False

Nostalgia

TV for All!

TV Spread the word

TV for the unfortunate

Television News continues to fascinate leaders and citizens alike

It makes news just as it covers news

We tend to overstate some of its accomplishments, pretty and ugly

Short sightedness: this basically states that journalists do notbecome encumbered by celebrities.

Some of the criticism television journalism inspires:

Television news did not infect foreign substance.

News has been enjoyed for as long as it as been exchanged.

Crime is reported with great industriousness on television

These stories of misbehavior tend to be told in the friendly but earnest equitone that has become the voice of the medium worldwide.

Even though celebrity scandals and unidentified flying objects do makeit onto television- they aren’t as crazy as the ones that appear intabloids.

Chapter 38Two Cultures – Television versus Print

The Scholars Neil Postman Chair of Department of

Communication Arts and Sciences at New York University

“Defender of the Book” Reading as an Ordered Process:

Left-to-right forces logic and reason

Camille Paglia Teaches at the University of Arts

Philadelphia Not criticism, but modern media is

unjustly dismissed by most cultural critics – “a kind of intellectual denial”

Television is culture What makes any new media form less

significant then the last?

Introductory Conversation

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”

Exodus 20:4

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”

John I: I

The Second Commandment

“The prohibition against graven images didn’t forbid just pagan idols. It banned all visual imagery, of anything on earth or in the heavens. Moses knew that once a people begin to make images of any kind, they fall in love with them and worship them. Historically, the Second Commandment diverted Jewish creative energy away from the visual arts and into literature, philosophy, and law”

- Paglia

Writing the perfect medium because, unlike pictures or an oral tradition, the written word is a symbol system of a symbol system, twice removed from reality and perfect for describing for a God who is also far removed from reality; a non-physical, abstracted divinity.”

“Don’t watch TV; go do your homework”-Postman

The Scientific Revolution and the Power of Imagery

Then the Catholic Church got nervous about [print], because of the possibilities of further heresy, and began to restrict the printing press…the intellectual power returned from the south to the north” the north became “the realm of the word, and the south returned to spectacle”

- Postman

“The Italian Catholic Jesus can’t speak. He’s either preliterate – a baby in the arms of Mary – or comatose – a tortured man on a cross. The period when Christ is literate, when he can speak, is edited out of South Catholicism.”

- Paglia

Adaptation and Literacy

“Humans are not biologically programmed to be literate….This is the challenge of literacy: to get children accustomed to sitting still, to abiding to the realm that is unnaturally silent. That is the world of the word. How can silence compete with television?” - Postman

“Some people are inclined to the sedentary life that reading requires.”

- Paglia

Seductions of Eloquence

“The Purpose of education was to teach each of us to defend ourselves against the “seductions of eloquence”. In the realm of the word we learn the specific techniques to resist these seductions: logic, rhetoric, and literacy criticism”

- Postman

The Machine

“There is a machine producing such images, but it is capitalism [not political machine], and the output is the commercial”

-Postman “Symbols are infinitely repeatable,

but they are not inexhaustible”- Postman

“Ads shaped the imagination of my generation”

- Paglia “Television commercials are now

the most powerful source of socialization”

- Postman

What it means to be Secular…

“Popular culture is an eruption of paganism- which is also a sacred style. We are steeped in idolatry. The sacred is everywhere. I don’t see any secularism. We’ve returned to the age of polytheism. It’s a rebirth of pagan gods”

-Pagalia

“TV is not something you watch; it is simply on, all the time”

-Paglia TV is all about hair…soap operas,

and Charlie’s Angels…it’s all about the hair. Very Pagan.

It is secular… or is it?

“What I call the secularization of imagery depletes religious symbolism: not only the frequency of the image but also the ignominious tie between the image and commercialization. That is why we in the West can’t understand…the martyr[s].”

-Postman

Imagery of Leaders

American Presidents: Reagan, Kennedy, Bush

Compare with England: The Prime Minister and the Queen

Education vs. Television

Postman: Education needs to supply what the rest of culture does not

Paglia: Education needs to be repressive and teach a system

Television vs. Reality

“Television…tells you that there was a rape in New York, and then it tells you there was an earthquake in Chile and then it tells you that the Mets beat the Cardinals”

“That’s life”- Postman

- Paglia

Television vs. Reality

Postman: People should question those connections and try to relate to the normal

Paglia: Life is like going from an airplane crash to a hemorrhoids ad

Comic Relief vs. Getting Attention

“We are talking about magnitude” “Instead of being something

different than television, [school] is reduced to being just another kind of television.”

- Postman

Logocentrism

Postman: A language culture is necessary to make sense of the world

Paglia: A language culture is necessary to create ‘repressive’ education

Discussion Questions

Do you think that entertainment and television news are converging?

Do the positive aspects of TV, like spreading news to the illiterate, out weigh the negative aspects of TV?

Do you think Paglia makes a strong argument justifying the intellectual integrity of television, or more so defends its power over audiences?

How much of the imagery and information on television represents reality?