Analysis Of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death

In his essay “But Enough about You” Brian Williams addresses a very interesting issue about the user- generated media and the Mainstream media in today's society. He believes that the ideal American culture has changed because people are only concerned about themselves. Nowadays people are more interested to watch news if the implied message involves them or if it's good enough to tell someone else. Williams explains how all the new devices, the web, video and the digital cable fill a perceived people need. Therefore, many people are not interesting in reading newspaper or watching news in which it leads the Media to lose viewers. He emphasizes that the audiences that follows the news report are dropped, but the media still work hard to gathering

It being the leading source of news since the printing press. We put our faith in the media to report accurate facts unbiasedly. Between 1983 and now the media industry has consolidated from 50 individual companies to 6. That means that though the impression given is that there are a multitude of sources to attain information, the messages being communicated are all one in the same. The limitation of media sources cause a ripple effect of limited information, allowing these companies to control the public’s perception on

All throughout history we have used metaphors to describe people, places, events and emotions; so it is perfectly fitting to describe the mediums with which we project our ideas as a metaphor as well. This is Neil Postman 's basis for his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Television and other media outlets have conditioned us to accept entertainment in every aspect of life; but most of all it masks the state of public affairs and politics. Through his book, Postman begs that we recognize the ways in which media shapes our lives and how we can use them to serve us instead of hurt us. Broken into two parts, Amusing Ourselves to Death focuses on a historical analysis of media, then discusses the television media-metaphor in more detail. Postman examines how media has infected every aspect of public discourse by prizing entertainment as the standard of truth.

In 1985, when Neil Postman penned, Amusing Ourselves to Death, CNN, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle existed in its infancy and televangelism was still unscathed by the Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart scandals. A B-movie actor sat in the Oval Office. Conceivably most importantly, television, the love child of the photograph and the telegraph, had reached maturity to become fully entrenched in American culture after thirty some years (p. 100). Newscasters, preachers, and politicians had become celebrities. The information presented on the tube was deficient in meaningful content and lacked context. Nevertheless, the public’s level of amusement rode high. Television’s capacity to manipulate public persona and information on the news, in religion, and in politics creates a vaudeville atmosphere on these modes of public discourse.

Growing up as a child, my mom made a habit out of watching the morning news no matter what was taking place in the country. Whether my mom watched the news for entertainment or to see what was significant to her has been left unanswered. Correspondingly, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman argues that the news today is entertainment and irrelevant to the people who obtain it. Not to mention Postman’s character, Henry David Thoreau gives an example of Postman’s debate stating, “Perchance the first news that will leak into the flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.” To validate Postman's argument, I watched a 30-minute news segment from News 7, on January 25th, 2017. The section stated that a birth certificate found in the debris left by a tornado that battered Petal, MS on January 21st, 2017. Also, after reviewing several news segments, I found Postman’s theory to be accurate.

In the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman states his thesis, "All public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment which has out us in a position where we are "slowly amusing ourselves to death”. By this, he means that the media has negatively affected the level of public discourse in contemporary America, and it considers media in a larger context to achieve that. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a foretelling look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals.

U.S. adults spend, on average, over 10 hours everyday consuming media. Media is everywhere around us, whether it is the internet, television, newspapers, or even the ads that you see outside everyday. Americans are surrounded by media and it is practically impossible to avoid media for the average American. For the most part, we look towards media to make sense of the senseless, and to show us what the difference is between the lies and the truth. Many Americans feel as if the media would never skew from the complete and utter truth. But, that is a false assumption, the media, like everyone else has an opinion on topics and many times they use their great voices to make the consumers develop the same opinion.

We are living in information age, where quick access to all types of information is a way of life. People around the relay on media, for information related to politics, culture, sports, technology, economy and various other factors. Although media is applauded for its role in transforming our life by providing relevant and accurate information, there is increasing exasperation about current media practices. Many people believe that current media practices are not aligned with the objective of providing correct information to public. In doing so, media portrays a picture that is favorable to its own objective and may contradict the reality; consequently these practices are termed

The Mediatized refers to the information overload provided by the government, the media and any other mean of mass communication (Page 14). The problem resides in the notion that it is very difficult to choose which information is precise and which is information is factually wrong (Page 15). The media is usually motivated by subjectivity and biases, which removes the objectivity of the information that is being broadcast (Page 16). As a result, skepticism about the legitimacy and worthiness of the material delivered is raised in terms of serving a greater purpose of connectivity at the multitude level (Page

The internet is our modern source for news media; the importance of the newspaper has not only declined, it is in a sense, obsolete. We now turn to the internet for opinions, news, and entertainment. Even though the way in which we consume information (PBS) has changed, the importance of an unrestricted and watchful media has not changed. (Magleby, Light, & Nemacheck, 2010)

Neil Postman was an athlete, student, teacher, philosopher, writer, and many more things. All these experiences give him a very unique outlook and world view. He prides himself on being a critic on culture and theorist of media. He began his professional teaching career at NYU where he founded their graduate program on media ecology. He remained a professor there until he died of lung cancer in 2003. Of the several works he wrote he is best known for Amusing ourselves to Death in which he analyzes today’s media culture and our obsession with TV media. This book arose from a panel he did discussing George Orwell, Nineteen Eight-Four and comparing it to our contemporary society. In the first three chapters of this book he touches on a variety of topics such as metaphors and media how they shape our world view and epistemology.

In today’s society, remaining connected and knowledgeable of current events and the newest trends is vital to staying ahead in business, education, and social standing. This information is supplied to everyone through the internet, newspapers, television, and radio. One can tune into stations such as CNN, NBC, Fox News, Al-Jazeera, and many others (“SQs of Media Outlets”). In order to meet the needs of viewers, readers, and listeners, the ideal media system would contain accurate, quick information, with a purely impartial view on the facts as they are known. However, this modern media system has not maintained an objective view, pushing opinionated and slanted reporting onto the population in order to create profit and gain customers. The exploitation of information media for personal gain has created a toxic and inaccurate present, constant in today’s society.

It would be easy to dismiss Neil Postman as just a grumpy old man complaining about what those young whippersnappers are up to while his generation is upholding the values of civilization, the last vanguard against the Huns. Except for the fact that he was right: Modern technologies have allowed individuals to withdraw into themselves, to avoid engaging in public discourse. This imperils democracy, according to Postman, along with a number of other social critics of the last several decades. But at least as problematic (even as perilous), according to Postman, is the fact that many modern technologies and the social habits that accompany them, discourage any inner dialogue as well so that both private and public lives are silenced to any meaningful content.

For the average American there is no escape from mass media. It can be found within our news papers, movies, television and internet, which account for most of our news and entertainment source. In Michael Parenti's book, Make Believe Media, the Politics of Entertainment, Parenti attests that this mass media clouds our society's perception of reality by propagating prefabricated images that create and validate a superficial ideological world. Unfortunately, people are denied the opportunity to obtain and interpret information, which impacts our society, by media conglomerates that wish to keep their industry profitable and on the rise. Effectively, the American public's information and entertainment sources are controlled by some ten

Neil Postman, in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, discusses the harmful effects television in a society that is saturated by it (Postman, 29). As I read Neil Postman’s book, I was given a new point of view on the role of television in my search for news and entertainment. Through Postman’s writing I found that the consequences of television are not in the information presented, but rather in how the information is presented. In addition, after watching “Conspiracy Theory Rock”, a video presented on the television show “Saturday Night Live”, this problem of unfair presentation from corrupt television corporations was made clear through the depiction of untold controversies, such as presidential assassinations (“Conspiracy Theory Rock”). I contest that the problem with the corrupt presentation of television cannot be solved by revising the corporate control, because it is unlikely to occur due to the financial power the corporations hold. Instead, the way that television is consumed must be changed. The solution for the biased and inaccurate presentation of television involves changing the way that the viewer consumes the entertainment by critically considering the source and the circumstance that the information is being presented in.