When Did News Become Theater?

In the genre of news reporting and journalism, ratings are the lifeblood of any organization that strives to be relevant and viable. A news organization must first attract an audience, and then retain them in order to survive. Organizations dealing with the reporting of news have to play to their strengths and mitigate weaknesses to effectively relay world events in a format that will keep an audience engaged. The world is constantly becoming a smaller place with the introduction of new technologies that allows viewers instant access to developing news stories.  Increasingly, news outlets are relying on sensationalism and other similar tactics to attract audiences. It is becoming more imperative that the audience no longer takes reported news at face value, but rather considers what is being offered with a more critical eye. In the essay “The Bias of Language, The Bias of Pictures”, Neil Postman and Steve Powers collaborated to highlight the difference between language, stationary pictures and moving pictures and how they affect the delivery of news to an audience.

The use of language in the reporting of news can be both informative, and yet misleading at the same time. In today’s fast paced world, instant news is thought of equally as a source of information and entertainment. The need for access to better information has millions to scouring multiple sources for information about events locally and around the world. The volume of news stories available has increased along with the amount of sources reporting them. Audiences are increasingly relying on the words of others to seek, find and interpret these stories. The increasing problem is to find accuracy in the reporting. According to Postman and Powers, language is used for description, judgments and inferences, but the audience is at the mercy of the presenter’s interpretation.  Postman and Powers put it this way, ‘we use language itself to convert the image to idea’ (Postman and Powers, 2008, p. 485). In other words, an event is visualized and converted to a descriptive meaning as it applies to the individual witnessing the event.  Using these, it is possible to relate events from one individual’s perspective. The downside is that this can lead to multiple interpretations and different descriptions of the same event as people interpret things differently. Though news reporting should be objective, the use of inflection, words and tone can reveal bias in the reporter. Postman and Powers correctly point out that it is only natural for some bias to be in any information being related from another person. It is only natural.

Stationary pictures are excellent for capturing the physical representation of an area at a single moment in time. The drawback is that they cannot relate the underlying story or emotion well outside what is immediately visible in the picture. Postman and Powers stated ‘a picture does not present to us an idea or concept about the world’ (Postman and Powers, 2008, p.485). This is an important distinction, as it is possible to see how things are at the moment the pictures is taken, but without language it is impossible to know why. Legions of photographers are employed to cover world events and take pictures of the news worthy events. How often has a dramatic image captivated an audience, but failed to fully describe what is going on.  Just as scenarios are difficult to describe in words, it is equally difficult to cover the same situation with just a picture. Perhaps this is why so much credit is given to the gifted photographer that can capture a telling moment or mood in a still photograph.

Moving pictures offer a good combination of the benefits of language and stationary pictures. The problem with this medium is that it is possible to have too much information at once. It was stated ‘Moving pictures favor images that change’ (Postman and Powers, 2008, p. 486). This explains why dramatic video, and anything showing rapid destruction and movement are very popular on TV.   Postman and Powers further suggest that this mentality leads a broadcast to only show quick clips and dramatic video. In today’s newscasts, the entire broadcast is set up like a production, complete with musical themes and producers choosing the best angle for a camera. It is compared to the theater, and at some level seeks to equally entertain as well as inform. The disturbing trend is to seek out dramatic and negative video for the impact, but this tends to lean heavily towards the negative side of the news. If all that is relayed to the public is negative, what impacts will that have on the psyche of the audience? More consideration should be given to what is reported and shown to the public. News stories now get reported before the cost of releasing that information is known, and that has direct impacts on many issues from national security to the desensitizing of our children.

Postman and Powers seek to inform the audience on how to interpret and relate to the various news sources the audience will encounter. They want the audience to understand the difference between important details and hype when learning of world events. With critical thinking, the viewer can weigh the content and purpose of language, stationary pictures and moving pictures. The canny news producer will play on the strengths and minimize the weaknesses to attract and keep the audience, which is the life blood of the news industry. Postman and Powers are trying to educate the audience of these news outlets to view the news objectively and with a critical mind. With the theater being involved in news production, it is now more important than ever that the audience weigh all information and symbolism before accepting anything as fact.

Reference

Postman, N., Powers, S. & Gray-Rosendale, L (2008). “The Bias of Language, The Bias of Pictures” Pop Perspectives: Readings to Contemporary Culture E. Barrose (Ed.).  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.