Neil Postman doesn’t think much of television – particularly television news.

Neil Postman doesn’t think much of television – particularly television news. In fact, he says television is “most dangerous when its aspirations are high, when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations” (p. 16). Postman is a classic example of a technological determinist. He believes the emergence of the medium of television as the dominant source of political information has fundamentally altered “the content and meaning” of our public discourse (p. 9). And not for the better. Briefly, try to summarize Postman’s key argument about the impact of television on public discourse. What is it about television that makes it so harmful as a source of political news and discussion, in his view? 

Read this critique of television and its influence on news and political culture in the United States. These two chapters are from a book published by media scholar Neil Postman in 1985. Postman takes a technological determinist approach; he claims the powerful medium of television was designed to entertain, not inform, and was destroying our ability to deliberate in a way that democracy demands. Some dismiss Postman’s arguments as over-simplified, even extreme. But many believe he was prescient. They say his claims, delivered more than three decades ago, accurately predicted the political culture that exists today. file:///Users/tina/Downloads/Postman_Amusing%20Ourselves%20to%20Death.pdf