CSPAN Interview: The Life and Times of Neil Postman

1. Why are we amusing ourselves to death?

Television is an awesome technology which changes our culture by altering our view of public discourse. At the most general level the FORM of the televisual medium is COMMERCial ENTERTAINMENT. Television resonates in our culture. It's resonates becasue it not longer is limited to providing entertainment but has been the primary medium by which people attain their informal and has become the primary carrier of important cultural conversation. However, the SUBSTAANCE OR CONTENT of the messages which are communicated via the television medium are influenced the entertainment biases of this particular medium. As public discourse is influenced entertainment values or biases becomes a source of amusement, rather than as a serious discussions of the important issues which touch our lives.~

2. Do you dislike television?

I love television. What television does best is to furnish "junk entertainment" e.g sports, movies, game shows and so forth. He feels that television is at it's best when it furnishes junkentertainment, as in fact, as a medium of communication this is all that commercial television is capable of.

3. Why are you embarrassed when television tries to carry serious cultural conversations (public discourse) i.e. news, education, politics.

I believe that television can not really carry serious cultural conversations because it is really designed to do so. it is a commercial medium, it is a instrument for the advancement corporate profits, and thus, the primary goal of this medium is to round up an audience advertisers. It's primary goal is to gather an audience and it is not really too particular about m it uses to secure an audience. The best way to round up an audience for advertisers to entertainment and amusing. For example, consider the O.J. Simpson trial, does the trial demand such extensive coverage because it is news or because it is entertainment?

4. Why can’t the evening news really be a medium for serious public discourse?

5. When serious journalists try to engage in serious public discourse are they constrained by the nature of the medium?

Yes. Message designers must usually follow where the medium leads them. For example, message designers creating televisual news must follow rules such as:

1 .Never present information using just talking heads.

2. Give precedence to stories which can be dramatized with visual imagery.

3. Affective or emotional message content should take precedence over rational message content.

 4. Eschew complexity and keep the message simple. If the issue is complex be sure than thevisual is easily comprehensible e.g heros vs villains, good guys vs bad guys, persons vs nature, little guys vs the system and so forth.

6. What is the difference between a journalist and a newssteller?

Newstellers are some of the most physically attractive people in the culture. A newsreader or newsteller is hired because their appearance, their voice, their manner of self-presentation increases the chances that audience members will attend to their newscast. In a visually-culture many audience members are more concerned with who is reading the news rather than the substance of content of the news. A journalist is hired because of their ability to write, their ability to analyze, their ability to construct an argument, the ability to understanding the subjects they write about in terms of the past, present, and anticipated future i.e. that is the ability to place things in heir appropriate context to facilitate audience comprehension.

7. Is this a problem, after all it does not take much journalistic ability to read the news.

 I agree, it certainly does not require a college degree to be a newsreader,  all the broadcast medium requires of its "journalists" is attractiveness, style, and reading ability. However, I think the problem goes a little deeper. It our journalists, the persons who we expect to be serious "culture watchers" are nothing more than entertainers, than in the age of television it becomes easy for out politicians to be entertainers. For example, George Bush was a Navy pilot, head of the CIA, a first baseman on his college baseball team, yet he was perceived on television as a "wimp". Essentially, we were judging him not by what he "gives out" but what he "gives off", we were judging him using criteria derived from entertainment. When the appearance and style of our journalists and our politicians takes precedence over their ideas and their discourse, than we need to be aware that the biases embedded int he televisual mediums are influencing the way we perceive and act upon our world.

8. Why can't televisual debates be taken seriously as informed political discourse?

In order to hold an audience for the commercials: 1) candidates must answer questions from newsreaders rather than set their own agenda; 2) their responses must be limited to two or three minutes; and 3) their responses to their fellow "debater" is limited to one or two minutes. How can you take seriously a communication situations which demands that you offer a solution to the Middle East problem in two or three minutes?" If political candidates were interested in seriously informing the public, they would ask " what kind of kind of fools do you think we are,we are serious people, it is ridiculous to even thing that one could seriously discuss an issue as complex as the Middle East in three or four minutes. To assume that a medium which is heavily influenced by the values of commercial entertainment is a legitimate form of publiclpolitical discourse is a charade.

9. What are the consequences of television masquerading as a legitimate form of political discourse?

I believe that Americans are the most ill informed people in the Western world. By getting their information from a mediums which is primarily an entertainment medium Americans know of a lot of things, about very little. For example, I did a survey after the conclusion of the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1983. The crisis when on for nearly a year and was the dominant new story of the year, receiving enormous coverage. The survey asked people basic questions such as: where is Iran? what is the dominant religion in Iran? where did the Shah come from? what does Ayatollah mean? Most people surveyed were unable to answer these questions and those who could suggested they had gotten their information from mediums other than television e.g Time, New York Times.

10. Doesn't television furnish us a window to the world and dramatically increase our levels of awareness?

I fully agree that television is a window to the world, but it is a curious windows with interesting distortions and refractions. The view of reality offered by television is altered by the biases or the entertainment form. In order to hold attention the entertainment form is biased toward message content which is NOVEL rathert han mundane, BIZARRE rather than common, VISUAL rather than oral or written, EMOTIONAL rather than rational, SIMPLE vs complex, and so forth. For example the news is defined by what visual images are available to be broadcast. It is much more interesting and attention-getting to watch visual images of shooting in Lebanon that to discuss the reasons why their is shooting in Lebanon. Thus, most televisual news presents a fragmented de-contextualized world, which is divorced from the context of the story which would help give the story meaning. A discussion of the reasons why people are fighting in Lebanon would take more than three or four minutes, and would be difficult to represent visually. Thus, Americans tend to know, "of' the conflict in Lebanon but they do not know much "about" the conflict in Lebanon"

11. How does the fact that the form of the televisual medium is visual influence public discourse?

It influences our definition of "news". The chances of information becoming "news" is increased dramatically is there are visual images to dramatize the message. I suspect that television is probably not an appropriate medium for the communication of serious ideas. Ideas are expressed in language, in words, in sentences. Visual images are not a satisfactory medium for the communication of ideas and the rational discussion of issues. Most broadcast journalists are aware of the limitations of the medium and the limitations of sound byte journalism.

12. What do you mean when you say that television is discontinuous?

The view the he world which is offered to us by commercial television is fragmented. This discontinuity is created by the intrusion of commercial messages and the need to structure the newscast in such a way, and to alter message content in such a way that the goal of keeping an audience is attained. Discontinuity is a dominant characteristic of the televisual medium. We would not stand for this discontinuity in the movie theater or when reading a book. For example, during a film in a theater we had to break for commercial messages every eight minutes. What would happen if when reading a book, the author stopped every four or five pages for a commercial message? The television newsreaders invented a new grammatical category - a conjunction which does not link anything together. The conjunction "now this" was used by televisual newsreaders to connect stories and which effectively meant that what your will now see will have little connection to what you have just seen.

13. What are the possible effects of discontinuity?

Well I Suppose it tell people that since all stories on the news are of approximately the same length, that one story is no more important than the other, and when inordinate attention is devoted to stories such as the O.J. Simpson trial, it could be easy to conclude that culturally, this is a very important story. The form or structure of a newscast also suggests that the commercials are just as important as the news. The producers of the news primarily want to get your attention, but not to involve you to the extent that you would not be cognitively ready to pay attention to the commercials. The implicit attitude is whatever thoughts and feelings were evoked by this three minute chunk of winews" you want you to forget about it and switch you attention to the commercial. Thus, the form of the "news" is inherently discontinuous, one must always breaker for the commercials, and thus, the level of perceived seriousness is decreased.

14. What about news which is structured differently e.g. the McNeil-Learner Report on PBS, CSPAN, CNN?

Yes, removing commercials from the news does tend to enhance a news shows level of perceived seriousness. However, what do CSPAN and PBS have in common? Correct, they do not draw a very wide audience, largely because they have been conditioned to process their information in three minute chunks. What about CNN? CNN has interesting possibilities, it that is not a prisoner of the if give us 22 minutes and we will bring you the world" format. In other words the form which messages take are not as constrained as the evening news. However, generally you will notice that CNN is on a day to day increasingly adopts the format of televisual news. The exceptions, are of course when they become an entertainment medium as when they broadcast extended coverage of the Gulf War or the O.J. Simpson trial. Here the content biases of the televisual medium show through quite clearly, as these stories, as they are presented to the audience, are visual, emotional, novel, simple, and dramatic. Thus, I am arguing that in order to engage us in a serious discussion of an issue we need both consistency in form and content.

15. Does the form in which we receive our information influence our expectations regarding information?

cognitive abilities and expectations regarding information?

Yes. Situation comedies may foster the expectation that problems can be resolved in 22 minutes. The nightly newscast creates the expectations that serious issues can be discussed in three minute "chunks". The existence of the television remote control creates a very impatient audiences, an audiences which is waiting and expects to be entertained. It is likely that the cognitive dispositions and abilities of individuals are shaped by the mediums of communication to which they are exposed. With the aseendance of the visual image, the word has moved to the periphery of he culture. It is easy to attending to face-paced emotional visual images. It requires more cognitive work to attend to spoken and written words. It would probably not be possible to get an audience to attend to a extended serious discussion of public issues e.g the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Language is complex, to process words require a higher level of cognitive involvement, involvement which many persons in our culture are not able, willing, or conditioned to invest.

16. Are you pining for the days of the eighteenth century when speech and conversation were grounded in the values of print, and there was a close connection between speech and the written word?

No, I think people need to be aware of the power of a communication medium like television to influenceourculturs. Our culturehaschange and our communication technologieshavechanged,so it is not possible that "the word" will ever have the ascendancy it did during the seventeenth and , eighteenth century. However, we need to be aware of the way in which a visual medium like television has the power to influence our "news", how we educate our children, our consumer behavior, our spiritual life and so forth.

17. Why are you concerned that visual images are replacing language as the dominant medium of public communication?

Mediums each have their own epistemology, i.e they influence the process of how we come to know, and the process by which we assess the truth or falsity of the information which we are exposed to. Visual images tend to tad our emotions. It is really not possible to talk about the truth or falsity of an image. For example, a McDonald's commercial dramatize a father taking is son to McDonald's which results in a emotional bonding experience seemingly characterized by love, fun, and happiness. Is this image true or false. If our understanding of important public issues is communicated to us only in the form of visual imagery, we may be less able to distinguish between what is true and what is false. Micro-sociologist Erving Goffman distinguishes between information you give (ideas, reasons, facts, language) and the information you give off (nonverbal messages). The aseendance of visual image in our culture leads people to attend more to the information a person gives off rather than to the information the person gives. For example, when Nicole Brown sister cries on the witness stand in the O.J. Simpson trial, are people likely to pay more attention to the information she gives or the information she gives off. When Hillary Clinton tried to lead the reform of the health care industry were people paying more attention to the information she gave or the information she gave off? Visual imagery cuts deep in the consciousness of the American public.

18. Have you noticed a change in your students in the 27 years you have been teaching?

Oh yes. Not surprisingly, students are more inclined to think and write the way in which television teaches them to think and write. One of the fundamental ideas in language and reasoning is to avoid contradiction, all reasonable people are suspicions of contradiction in other people's behavior and in other peoples thinking. For example, because television is no discontinuous and decontextualized, it is difficult to determine if a particularly person's ideas are consistent with or contradict their previous ideas of statements on a particular issue. I think students have lost a well developed sense of unity, coherence, and contraction. For example, a student will make one statement on the first page of an essay and than make a contradictory statement on the fifth page of the essay. When I suggest that this is problematic, they say "no problem because this is here and that is there." When your education is influenced by typographic values you grow up learning how to write, how to express yourself in linear and logically connected statements, and this becomes your dominant mode of expression. When visual images dominate one's education their is no logical structure, the images one sees in the medium of television and film have different structures and different purposes and goals. Notice when you see a film and than go and read the book. The book generally provides a more complete description of the relationships between characters and element sin the plot, it is rather than very rapidly alluding to these images, it explore and developments them, not because print is necessarily superior to film, but because this is what the medium allows.