Would Postman approve of Stafford's evocation of the news in his poem? Why or why not? Would he approve of his solution to the kind of threats that TV news seems to pose? Why or why not?
Your response is due by 4 p.m., Wed., Sept. 18.
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Postman would agree, the world seen through screens is only an eighth of an inch thick: To feed the screen, components of coherent reality are broken up and processed into, glossier, dilapidated versions of themselves, divorced from a context that gives true meaning. To flip through channels on cable, is to combine a little bit of every synthetic condiment on hand: you mix the ketchup with the mustard... with the mayo..the salt.. with the breast implant.. the..pepper with the soy sauce and the car bomb ..with the tar tar. The soup is noxious and brown, moreish....
'Please, sir, I want some more.'
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralyzed with wonder; the boys with fear.
'What!' said the master at length, in a faint voice.
'Please, sir,' replied Oliver, 'I want some more.'
The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle. The gunman who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday before being fatally shot by law enforcement officials, had a Navy record that included several unauthorized absences from duty. Next up were Jack Osbourne and pro Cheryl Burke doing the foxtrot. Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne were in the audience, and Sharon broke into tears as Jack danced. Len said, "Jack, you can dance!
Stafford's description of friends joining a mass of voices, conversations had about rumors heard on television, resonates deeply with the corrosive effect television has on American culture Postman writes about. American culture is becoming, essentially, a mass of “unknown/ voices and rumors of crowds,” exemplifying Postman's information-action ratio. The world is seen through glass, war happens, for us, on a screen, making it something unreal, intangible, a spectacle to watch, but do nothing about. “The whole world/ alive in glass,” Stafford writes, capturing the barrage of information, facts and events the televisions shows us without context; and so American culture has become based around these context-less facts of which people believe they are speaking intelligently about, but truly have no idea. Instead, they “tune in next week” for the “Now... This” aspect of news, waiting to form an opinion about another war happening on a screen of glass.
In that light, Postman would approve of Stafford's solution—to turn off the television, to immerse oneself in the tangible, real, immediate world, rather than witness the spectacle of events from another person's reality on a television screen. With water, Stafford's narrator closes the distance between the events on the television screen, which acts as a barrier to places far away; yet, he realizes that the world is immediate. In the last line of the poem, the narrator requests that “everything go deep again,” which is, I believe what Postman is trying to make us realize in his book. The television screen is both literally a barrier between the images shown to us, “protecting” us from news given around the world, and it has also become a metaphorical barrier between ourselves and the reality of the images shown on television. “Hard” news has become entertainment, and I believe Postman is trying to convey the audacity and ridiculousness in such an idea, which is what Stafford calls for, a return back to the real world, in the end of his poem.
I think Postman would agree with Stafford's poem about what news has done to us as a culture.
In his poem, Stafford describes people affected by "evening news" to have "leaped through, disappeared, become unknown voices and rumors of crowds." Postman believes that living in a world that revolves around the screen exists for no other reason than to entertain, and that news isn't informative as much as it is entertaining. Postman said that television causes our culture to lose their sense of what it means to be well-informed because it deprives Americans of a contextual, coherent understanding of their own world.
I think Postman would agree that one solution to being (literally, as Stafford puts it) sucked into the world of television news, is to walk away from it and enjoy your own space, look around and notice things for yourself and have the ability to form your own opinions.
Postman criticizes not so much news, but its recipients for not questioning the validity of it when he said "...it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple."
This quote is simply stating that in order to be critical thinkers and not just agents of what the media wants people to believe, people have to start taking what they learn with a grain of salt and being able to form their own opinions and seek out confirmation of their knowledge elsewhere. Postman is saying, similar to what Stafford wrote in his poem, that people have to avoid falling into the trap of television news and walk away, open their own doors and see for themselves what is surrounding them.
I think that Postman would agree with Stafford’s poem. In his poem, Stafford talks about how the television seems to suck people in. Using the example of the evening news, when people watch television they become so immersed in it and tend just take in everything that is being said without even thinking about it. They tend to believe and listen to the words and images they see on their screens, but because there is so much of it, they’re not really doing anything about it. Instead they just sucked in and almost brainwashed in a sense. I found the last line of the first verse really resonates with that idea: “Some of our friends have leaped through, disappeared, become unknown voices and rumors of crowds.” It seems as though people get lost within the world of television. There are so many voices and opinions trying to be heard, but in the end they all tend to become a mess. This also reminds me of Postman’s information-action ratio. People are taking in so much these days when it comes to news, but they’re not doing anything about what they hear. They’re sitting back rather nonchalantly and just letting it take over. Plus, this also adheres to the notion that Postman talks about in regards to television news. It is primarily there to entertain, not inform.
I also feel that Postman would like Stafford’s suggested solution to this problem. In the second verse, it seems as though Stafford is mainly suggesting people to shut out the constant noise. He thinks it would be best to turn off the screens and just embrace the world for what it’s worth. It’s also about not having to listen to every single thing you hear on TV or read online. It’s okay to form your own opinions about certain topics and it’s okay to not agree with what you hear. Postman seems to have the same idea in mind in his book. He believes that society should take a step back from the screen and look at the bigger pictures at hand. I feel, though, that Postman would also suggest diving into the print media some more. Read a book, read a newspaper, etc. This goes back to his idea of the age of typography. We’re doing a lot less reading and a lot more listening. And this listening isn’t usually allowing us to come up with our own thoughts and ideas. We’re not exploring options or creating our own opinions. We’re just accepting what some people are saying and completely rejecting what others are saying. Even when it comes to reading articles online, most people tend to just skim them. Nothing seems to hold our interest for long periods of time anymore. This could be due to the fact that we live in such a media-driven world where we’re receiving incredible amounts of information in such short periods of time. Nothing seems to shock us anymore, either, which relates back to the first verse where Stafford talks about people just taking things in. It’s as though we just want to be entertained at all times. And while being entertained is great, it’s not exactly the most important.
I think Postman would agree with Stafford's description of the news. Stafford refers to the size of wars happening in the television as being, "only an eighth of an inch thick." This illustrates the audience's capacity to understand the importance of the events they're witnessing in the news. Because there is so much happening with such little context, people see full scale disasters as small, passing occurrences that hardly merit any further attention than watching them unfold on the screen. Postman has stressed that the amount of information without context makes people completely apathetic toward what is supposedly important news. He described this in his depiction of the information-action ratio, which has become completely unbalanced because of exactly what Stafford depicts.
Stafford also offers his personal solution to the television in his poem by stating that he turns away from the screen often enough to enjoy the space and check on the immediate environment he lives in. Postman would likely admire that Stafford finds information in his surroundings instead of just the television, however Postman also sees the disappearance of local news as resulting in a lack of public discourse, which Stafford doesn’t seem to touch upon. Although Stafford thinks in the same direction as Postman, Postman would likely take the solution several steps further.
I believe that Postman would agree with the main thesis of Staffords poem. I think the two thesis's run pretty much along the same line. Stafford argues that television and news suck people in and attract them. Stafford describes the affect that the evening news has on the people to have"leaped through, disappeared, become unknown voices and rumors of crowds." This goes along with Postman's theory of how the main purpose of the television is for entertainment. We can look at the Daily Show again. The primary purpose of his show isnt to relay news to the public but to entertain them. I feel like in a lot of cases today people believe everything they hear on the news. They form opinions based on what a newscaster is presenting to them instead of forming their own opinions and thinking for themselves.
Postman I think would agree in Staffords solution to the problem about turning of the television and perhaps picking up a book. He criticizes the pubic for being so easily influenced by what they see and suggests that they should take a step back and look at the broader scheme of things such as content for what its worth and form your own opionion on things.
I do believe that Postman would agree with Stafferd’s poem “Evening News” for they both suggest that the television is a vehicle that breaks connections, skews messages, and is consistently out of context due its format of presentation to its enormous audience. The constant streaming of news results with fragmented conversations not filling the functions of the press because of this screen culture we reside in. The issues are often incoherent and out of reach because “..the world is alive in glass.” Postman goes on saying just because we know something is happening in the world it doesn’t mean we’re going to make an effort to do something about it.
“”Knowing” the facts took on a new meaning, for it did not imply that one understood implications, background, or connections.” What Postman is suggesting is that we no longer have knowledge of what is relevant but we all know an abundance of things that are irrelevant. In the last stanza of the poem the solution suggested is that we go outside, turn off the TV and make our own assumptions of the world. It is as real as “..water from far is immediate on my hand.” In contrast, a solution Postman would suggest is that reading a book would help communicate facts; you have the ability to dissect a book then create an analysis which is open for discussion, opinion and comprehension. If only there was a way to take the wheel of this out of control “screen culture” vehicle, turn it around and help the world make sense of what is factual, after all what we know is what we see.
I think that Postman would definitely agree with the poem written by Stafford. Stafford starts off the poem by explaining what the evening news really is. He states; “a war happens only an eighth of an inch thick. Some of our friends have leaped through disappeared, become unknown voices and rumors of crowds.” This quote has two meanings. In the first part, Stafford talks about an entire war that people only see as an eighth of an inch thick, or in other words people can’t understand the true magnitude of disasters such as war because they are given little to no context surrounding a story on the news. Even though Postman doesn’t focus too much on the news, this quote does support his claims about our culture being given no context to the information we’re receiving which ultimately leads to our population not having a full understanding of the news or anything they watch on television for that matter.
The second part of the quote does a good job explaining what the TV epidemic is doing to people who watch it. They are getting pulled into a world where they no longer know what it means to be well-informed and since they are not well informed their voices “become unknown”. I think that Stafford is also trying to point out that the people watching TV who are getting sucked into this world with no context or accurate informative knowledge, are unaware of this epidemic and that their slowly losing their merit and knowledge through the television due to its entertainment objectives.
The second part of the poem states, “I turn from that world and room by room I walk, to enjoy space…I open our door to check where we live.” This is Stafford proposing a solution to the problem he stated earlier. He is suggesting that people turn off the tv and “turn from that world” to start paying attention to the world around us. Stafford wants us to obtain the context in our own world and start making our own observations and drawing our own conclusions like a well-informed person should do. Instead of taking in everything the tv tells us, we should start making decisions for ourselves. This is another aspect of the poem that I think Postman would agree with. Postman stresses how we are simply believing the entertaining information thrown at us and asking no questions. We are no longer questioning the authenticity of information, instead we are just believing everything we hear or see and not forming our own educated opinions. Staffords solution requires people to start thinking critically and forming well-informed opinions on our own, which is exactly what Postman would want.
Postman would agree with the sentiment written into 'Evening News' by William Stafford.
Postman's whole thesis is that the screen, in and of itself, is a broken means of communication. Stafford's meaning within the poem is that people end up getting sucked into what they're watching by the midway aspect of it. This aspect, along with the lack of two-way communication is what Postman has issue with regarding the screen as an information medium.
In regards to Stafford's solution, I'm not sure Postman would agree entirely, as Stafford advocates complete removal from the situation. However, I'm sure he's a fan of getting sucked out of the boob tube.
Postman would agree with Stanford’s poem, although he might say criticizing the media through a form of entertainment such as poetry might be feeding into it even more. However, he would agree with the basic concepts that Stanford alludes to.
When Stanford says “That one great window puts forth its own scene, the whole world alive in glass,” a statement referring to television. It reminds me of Postman’s argument in chapter one where he says the written word and ‘smoke signals’ are irrelevant compared to the impact television makes on the world. “On television, discourse is conducted largely through visual imagery, which is to say that television gives us a conversation in images, not words” (7).
Postman would agree with Stanford’s saying that the whole world was alive in television in regards to Postman’s “news of the day” theory. He argues that news could not exist in a world that lacked the media to “give it expression.” However, Postman says people rarely take action when hearing about the evening news, which correlates with Stanford's line about how the few who have, have “disappeared” and become “unknown voices and rumors of crowds.”
Stanford seems overwhelmed by this, in his second stanza, focusing on the world around him rather than the world in the “eighth of an inch thick” war. This, once again, matches up to Postman’s “information-action ratio” theory. Stanford’s solution focuses on what is in front of him: the room he is in, the sink, the door, the yard, etc., It shows that people should do what they can to influence, make sense of their own lives and form their own opinions from their own experiences and rely less on what is happening in the ‘television world.’ Postman would agree with this solution because he believes the ‘news of the day’ seen on television is a media event created by instantaneous delivery of news in order to entertain rather than inform. I think he would agree with Stanford in that people need to open their doors and enlighten themselves.
I think Postman would agree with Stafford’s poem, “Evening News.” In the poem, Stafford refers to technology as “one great window” that supplies it’s “own scene.” I think this mirrors Postman’s concept of current sources of media and the news they provide because no matter what technology or medium you are using to obtain your news, each one is supplying the same content based not off of factual and useful information, but off of entertainment, regards of what medium or “window” you are viewing it from. Stafford continues on with an example of such disconnectedness the news has with its viewers by describing a war occurring inside these windows as “only an eighth of an inch thick,” referring to the fact that what they are being fed is not reality (from a literal standpoint, for what they are viewing is less than an inch in dimension) and from a more metaphorical perspective – what you are seeing is truly not real, but a mere regurgitation of the reality filtered through an entertainment lens. I believe Postman would agree with this.
I think Postman’s distaste for modern news would lead him to agree to an extend with Stafford’s solution of turning away from the screens that supply it, and focuses on reality and the tangible and concrete conclusions that can be drawn from it. Turning away from news “only an eighth of an inch thick” and toward a “thick house” further illustrates the “thinness,” or lack of substance, the mainstream news provides, and to get the true meaning and bigger picture, one must experience the “thickness,” or the reality, the real world has to offer when viewed from first person. Postman probably does not think this is a clear solution, for people will in some way or the other always continue to consume news, but the space Stafford sees as necessary to “help to make everything go deep again” is one Postman would see necessary to formulating independent ideas not infiltrated with fallacy.
I think Postman would completely agree with the depiction of the news in Stafford’s poem. Stafford speaks about how war is only seen through a television screen and people only seem to get a glimpse of the bigger and rather scary picture. This small picture view is why people don’t feel connected to the world and they don’t find news important to them. Stafford makes the distinction between the fake world, which is television when he says that it is an eighth of an inch and calling his house thick which would be the real world. He said the solution is turning from the away from the television and going to get in touch with the world that surrounds him to make him a better person.
Postman would completely agree with the narrative Stafford constructs with his poem entitled “Evening News”. The poem describes reality being depicted through an “eighth of an inch thick”. Within this is occurring a war. It can be argued this is describing how news and information travels within a televised society. Postman argues that a visual medium of presenting information can desensitize the audience and strip the facts of their context. He describes that the danger of the television is that it captures its audience so well, and it speaks in such a plain language that it does not encourage deep thought. These two factors create a problem for the advancement for public discourse. It removes critical thinking from the citizens discourse. The removal context further adds to the information- action ratio imbalance. Issues that are covered on the television tend to be limited to a program. When the television covers issues like war many people cannot actually have a full understanding of what is happening, why it is happening, and the ramifications surrounding the war.
The solution Stafford presents would be acceptable to Postman. A general disconnect from wired media, and information gathering would repair how the discourse occurs in this country. When a society begins to disconnect from visual media and reverts back to textual communication of ideas there will be a repair of the discourse. When things are written the information tends to be more permanent, and better referenced thus creating a continuous dialogue.
Stafford’s first paragraph describes the news as being just how Postman describes it—a shallow, limited view of the world. Put another way: we know very little about a huge amount of stuff going on all over the world. The TV is described as a being a window to the whole world. Rightfully so too, since windows are thin (just like the world view one would get from isolating your vision to the TV).
Postman would approve of the solution because the end result is to “help to make everything go deep again.” The problem with TV is its shallow nature and inherent ability to distort the world. Stafford is trying to solve this problem by opening up the correct “window” (literally, his door) in order to become more attuned to the real world around him than the false reality presented on the television. He even prays that the reality he observes helps give depth back to a world seemingly starved of it. I think Postman (and anyone, really) would fully agree that reconnecting to reality would bring our culture closer to the truth.
Yes, I believe that Postman would wholeheartedly agree with Stafford’s evocation of the news in his poem. Stafford seems to echo Postman’s feeling that the evening news is only giving its viewers a snapshot of life around the world when he says a line about making a whole war only “an eighth of an inch thick”. Also, when Stafford talks about friends leaping through and disappearing into unknown voices and crowds, he seems to agree with what Postman is saying about receiving random facts that have no prevalence to daily life.
Also, the Stafford poem’s second section, where he talks about searching around his house for things that help make everything go deep again supports Postman’s claim of a lack of context. Postman claims that a viewer needs context of a news subject in order to make it relevant to their lives. Without this background knowledge of the issue, viewers are seeing stories more as a snapshot in time, with no knowledge of past events impacting those current or future events being reported. The last line of the poem; “I pray birds, wind, unscheduled grass, that they please make everything go deep again”, hints strongly at Stafford’s yearning for the return of the typographic way of thinking that the “evening news” has taken away from him.
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