What Does Postman Say About Media Bias

1. Epistemology “is a complex and usually opaque subject concerned with the origins and nature of knowledge.” (pg.17)
2. In our culture people believe more of what is written than said. So postman meant that the media or what it writes is what we consider to be true knowledge.
3. What Postman says about media bias is that “…a medium sits heavy, felt but unseen, over a culture…”. Postman is trying to say that it heavily influences us but we never really pay attention or notice how much of an impact it has and that its even there.
4. Three cases of truth telling Postman uses are proverbs, speech vs printed word, and Socrates. He uses proverbs by making fun of someone in our time using them, by showing an example of a bailiff using them towards

a jury. He also says things like “can you imagine…?” and “or even better…”. Next he uses speech vs printed word examples to show that this era believes that “published word…” has more “authenticity” than spoken and also that spoken is seen as more casual. Lastly he uses Socrates to show how long ago spoken words had a very large impact on thing. It’s a comparison to how things are in this era to then. But he uses all three of them together to show how the truth depends on which form we use to express it.
5. The pollution analogy is successful because it helps us understand that postman is arguing that our television knowledge contaminates some, but not all, of our communication.