"The Bias Of Language, The Bias Of Pictures"

            Steve Powers and Postman Neil drafted a short essay with the title “The Bias of Language, The Bias of Pictures.” This writing has detailed description of newscast structure. In their essay, they discuss pictures and language with focus centered on the differences between moving pictures, language and stationary pictures are discussed.  Powers and Postman highlight the way the above three subjects are interpreted, misinterpreted at times and the way they are perceived.  The judgments and descriptions that people make depending on what they unveil out of the three subjects is also discussed by the two authors.   It is very captivating to realize how people infer some things at times and interpret them as very wrong depending on what they get or see when they watch or read a sentence and misinterpret it.  

To discuss Powers and Postman’s claims concerning the differences found between moving pictures, language, and stationary pictures, it is important to start by focusing on the usefulness of the language.  In this case, language is mainly used to evaluate, describe, and reason or conclude things about an action or an event.  This is best illustrated by taking an analysis of three sentences from the Powers and Postman’s essay to illustrate their claim. Following excerpts clearly demonstrates their arguments; “Manny’s weight is 235 pounds and measures 5’8 feet in height”. “Manny is fat grossly.” “Manny eats a lot.”(Postman & Powers, 1992, pg.483).  The three sentences outlined above were quoted by different people depending on what they saw thus implying he notion of a description.  The third sentence shows an inference, simply because we have no idea of what Manny eats.  In this case, the reasoning is made because he looks overweight.  All the three sentences are different descriptions and interpretations of language. This illustration supports Powers and Postman’s claim about language that states that we will come across these kinds of sentences constantly when language is involved i.e. judgments, inferences and descriptions. This implies that each and every individual interpret things in a different way when seen or heard and they either pass judgment on the event, describe it, or state things falsely.

            Looking at pictures, a saying goes that a thousand words can be reflected by a picture. The truth of the statement is that pictures contain a language and can as well represent so many things to an individual. The difference between pictures and the language is that you see the words in the former come to life.  Pictures give more emotions compared to words because of the motion involved.  Seeing what goes on in a stationary picture is possible but figuring out what is really happening involves harder thinking.  In a stationary picture like news being watched, an individual gets the emotion from the story, the whole event, and how fast or the speed of the occurrence is. Therefore, both stationary and pictures in motion permit us to depict the situation as a whole other than leaving us wonder concerning the events happening or just about to occur.

            To a greater perspective, this is vital in a write up because Powers and Postman provide evidence that describe the differences found between language, stationary pictures and moving picture by talking about the television shows and newspapers. Here, TV shows contain a series of events that happen in a given sequence whereby the sequence is similar for every viewer. The authors’ main claim therefore concerning today’s newscast is that viewers must or should  come with information, a prepared mind, opinions, a sense of proportion and a system with an  articulate value. This is because most viewers lack mental equipment to differentiate between TV show and a newspaper article.

            To sum it up, I definitely agree with the authors because most interpretation of the three subjects depends on an individual and newscasts are usually brief.  Therefore, they tend to leave a space for the viewer to input his or her thoughts on the event. This increases the participation of the mind of the respective viewer in order to grasp the ideas being presented.