Skills involved in Reading and Watching

READING AND WRITING

Reading and Writing

From the onset, it would be prudent to note that as has been indicated in The Word on College Reading and Writing, we regularly interact with the ideas of other people through our reading. Postman and Powers, as will be highlighted elsewhere in this text, appear to have the very same perspective about television news show watching. To ensure that we interact in an effective and meaningful format with various media, including television and reading materials, there is need to develop a set of skills and capabilities. The Word on College Reading and Writing outlines a number of crucial skills on how to become a good reader. I found these to be useful and will be deploying them in practical scenarios going forward.

Like is the case with reading, one also ought to be skilled in the art of ‘watching.’ A television news is not necessarily meant to inform. Instead, it seeks to advance a certain agenda. News viewers are largely unaware of this fact. For this reason, by watching a television news show, viewers risk being misinformed instead of being informed – with the latter in this case being the primary reason as to why most persons tune in to the show. Towards this end, the relevance of seeking to ensure that viewers are sensitized about language and pictures (which are essentially the forms through which news shows ‘representations’ come to the viewer) cannot be overstated.

As has already been clearly demonstrated in the drawing by Maurice Sendek, the viewer has a responsibility to guard against misinformation. From a literal perspective, the TV set unfairly takes possession of the young girl’s doll, which she assertively claims back. This is the very same attitude a news show viewer should have. In the absence of the relevant knowledge with regard to language and pictures, viewers risk being taken advantage of by persons with nefarious agendas. For instance, as Postman and Powers indicate, with regard to language, there would be need to be aware of the fact that there are a myriad ways of describing an event. This effectively means that two reporters could describe the very same event in totally different ways because as Postman and Powers point out, words essentially represent an event in abstract terms, and are not necessarily the event. Thus, the viewer should not perceive what one reporter says as the ‘gospel’ truth.