Television Broadcasting

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how the basis of the thesis created by Postman and Powers is that words and images, especially in the television broadcasting medium, are created to distort the reality of events and how, even when such distortion is unintentional, it still occurs as a result of certain fundamental assumptions made by these two authors. It looks at how the assumptions pertain to the spoken word and to the images accompanying the words spoken by broadcasters and anchors. This thesis is investigated using Peter Jennings's "World New Tonight".

From the Paper:

"A further problem with television news broadcasting is the fact that time is limited. Often a story with multiple facets is illuminated only from one perspective, thus unintentionally biasing the viewer. To alleviate this problem, pictures are used to illuminate the various meanings that may be derived from a news broadcast. However, these also have their own distorting qualities. Pictures accompanying television broadcasts are usually in motion in order to catch the viewer's attention. They also have a certain emotive quality, evoking emotion from the viewer regarding an issue. This in itself may distort the reality behind the images."

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• Term Paper # 92694 : "The Cable Television Market"

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