“The Bias of Language, the Bias of Pictures” by Neil Postman and Steve Powers

Do you think that you see things the same way the world sees them?  Is a story ever told the same way twice?  Realistically the answer to both questions is “no.”  We cannot possibly see things the exact way that others see them and we certainly cannot tell a story word for word twice.  In the Postman and Powers writing “The Bias of Language, the Bias of Pictures” the topic is about not only the language used to describe something, but also interpretation of those words as well as the conclusion we come to regarding pictures either moving or stationary.  People obviously perceive and interpret things differently, everyone is unique and we all see and hear things in our own way, even if it is the same exact thing that we are experiencing as someone else at the same exact time. 

All three things discussed in this writing involving language, stationary pictures, or moving pictures involve how someone interprets or misinterprets the given facts.  The fact that we all form different conclusions of the same exact story only shows human diversity and should essentially help us appreciate our differences.

Postman and Powers describe differences between language, stationary pictures, and moving pictures and how they are identified by people.  The first of the three, language are words used to describe or detail an event.  Postman and Powers refer to these three sentences in their example:  “Manny Freebus is 5’8 and weighs 235 pounds; Manny Freebus is grossly fat; and Manny Freebus eats too much.” (Gray-Rosendale, 2008)(Pg 483).  These three sentences were made by three different people with regards to what they saw; that is their description of something, maybe a picture.  No one really knew anything about Manny Freebus; therefore the three statements were descriptions, judgments, and inferences according to Postman and Powers and all three statements are elements of the topic of discussion of this writing.  People either describe, pass judgment on or make false statements when using language to describe a particular event.

When in doubt that people interpret things differently, there are many games in which people can test for themselves that this theory is true; one of which involves one person making a statement or simply stating a fact in their own words and then whispering that fact or statement to the second person, the second person whispers it to the third person, and so on down the line until the final person hears the statement.  Then the final person repeats the statement and everyone then realizes how the statement has changed through the line of people that have all just heard how the story has changed through the line of people.  Everyone is usually pretty amazed at how the story has changed. 

The second two topics of this writing are stationary pictures and moving pictures which involve how someone interprets or misinterprets the given facts they witness in either a stationary or moving picture.  Seeing a stationary picture leaves much room for misinterpretation as we only observe a single view of an event.  Normally a lot more false statements can stem from stationary pictures as they leave room for much interpretation; whereas a moving picture or video details more of an event by showing a constant motion of an event leaving less detail to imagination.  For example, a video clip that lasts even three minutes shows much more detail than a stationary picture.  Even though there is a lot more information available to view, there is still a lot of passing judgment and making false statements. 

In conclusion, people form a variety of opinions stemming from events being described in language, stationary picture, or even moving picture formats.   As described in the writing even news crews are only giving their version of an event, and therefore only a portion of their reports can be believed to be true.   They are not really any better than anyone else when it comes to stating or restating facts of an event with absolutely no bias what-so-ever.  Ultimately each person will always continue to describe or illustrate the stories they are providing details for in their own representation of what happened.  It is not right or wrong, it is just the way human beings are made.