• How does Neil Postman’s theory of media as epistemology shed light on contemporary
concerns about post-truth politics?
Media as Epistemology (Neil Postman)
• Neil's aim of the book is to show that a great media metaphor shift has taken place in
America, with the result that the content of much of our public discourse has become
dangerous nonsense.
• His aim is demonstrate how under the governance of the printing press, discourse in
America was different from what is now- it was generally coherent, serious and
rational, and then how under the governance of television it has become shrivelled and
absurd.
• However, in order to avoid being named elitist against ‘junk’ on television, postman first
explains that his focus is on epistemology.
• Epistemology - the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity,
and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.
• He raises no objection to televisions junk. However, he highlights that the the problem
with television, is at its most trivial and therefore more dangerous when its aspirations
are high, when it presents itself as a carrier of important culture conversations.
• (The problem with television is ultimately when it tries to have important cultural
conversations)
Epistemology
• The part of epistemology relevance here is the the interest it takes in definitions of the
truth and the sources from which such definitions come.
• Postman seeks to show that the definitions of truth are derived at least in part, from the
character media of communication through which information is conveyed. He seeks to
discuss how media are implicated in our epistemologies.
• Postman, then goes further to claim that every medium of communication that he is
claiming has resonance, for resonance is metaphor writ large.
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• Whatever the original and limited context of its use may have been medium has the
power to fly far beyond th context into a new and unexpected ones.
• Because of the way it directs us to organise our minds and integrate our experience of
the world, it moses itself on our consciousness and social institutions in many forms.
• It sometimes has the power to become implicated in our concepts of piety or goodness
or beauty. It is always implicated in the way he we define and regulate our ideas of
truth.
• Postman seeks to explain how this happens - how the bias of a medium sits heavy, felt
but unseen over a culture- he uses three cases of truth telling.
First Case
• The first is drawn from a tribe in Western Africa that has no writing system but whose
rich oral tradition has given form to its ideas of civil law.
• When a dispute arises, the complainants come before the chief of the tribe and state
their grievances. With no written law to guide him, the task of the chief is to search
through his vast repertoire of proverbs and sayings to find one that suits the situation
and is equally satisfying to both complainants.
• Having accomplished that, all parties agree that justice has been done and that the
truth has been served. You will recognise of the course that this was largely the
method of Jesus and other Biblical figure, who living in an essentially oral culture, drew
upon all of the resources of speech, formulaic expressions and parables as a means of
discovering and revealing the truth.
• As Walter Ong points out, in oral cultures proverbs are not occasional devices : they
are incessant (everlasting). They form the substance of thought itself. Thought in any
extended form is impossible without them, for it consists in them.
• Two people like ourselves any reliance on proverbs and sayings is reserved largely for
resolving the disputes among or with children.
• Firs come first serve. These are forms of speech we pull out in a small crises with our
young but would think it ridiculous to produce in a courtroom where serious matters
are to be decide. Imagine a bailiff asking the jury if it has reached a decision and
receiving the reply ‘to err is human but to forgive is divine’.
• For the briefest moment, the judge might be charmed but if a serious language form is
not immediately forthcoming (about to happen), the jury may end up with a longer
sentence than most guilty defendants ,
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• Judges, lawyers and defendants do not regard proverbs or sayings as relevant
responses to legal disputes. In this, they are separated from the tribal chief by a media
metaphor.
• In a print based classroom, where law books, briefs, citations and other written
materials define and organise the method of finding the truth, the oral tradition has lost
much of its resonance, but not of all it .
• Testimony is expected to be given orally, on the assumption that spoken not the written
word is a truer reflection of the state of mind of a witness.
• Indeed, in many courtroom jurors are not permitted to take notes, nor are they given
written copies of the judges explanation of the law. Jurors are expected to hear the
truth or its opposite not read it.
• We may say that there is a clash of resonances in our concept of legal truth. One the
one hand there is a residual belief in the power of speech, and speech alone to carry
the truth, one the other hand there is a much stronger belief in the authenticity of
writing and in particular printing.
• This second belief has little tolerance for poetry, proverbs, sayings, parables or nay
other expression of oral wisdom. The law is what legislators and judges have written.
In our culture, lawyers do not have to be wise ; they need to be well briefed.
Universities
• In the case i have in mind, the issue of what is a legitimate form of truth telling was
raised to level of consciousness that was rarely achieved.
• The candidate had included in his thesis a footnote intended as a documentation of a
quotation, which read ‘ Told to the investigator at the roosevelt hotel on jan 18 1981 in
the presence of A &B.
• This citation drew the attention of no fewer than four of the five oral examiners, all of
whom observed that it was hardly suitable as a form of documentation and that it ought
to be replaced by a citation from a book or article.
• ‘You are not a journalist’ one professor remarked. You are supposed to be a scholar.
Perhaps because the candidate knew of no published statement of what he was t the
roosevelt hotel.
• He defended himself vigorously on the grounds that there were witnesses to what he
was told and that they could attest to the accuracy of the quotation, and that the form
in which an idea is conveyed is irrelevant to its truth.
• Carried away on the wings of his eloquence (articulacy) the candidate argued further
that there were more than 300 references to published works in his thesis and that it
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