The opening lines of Good Night, and Good Luck:
It is my desire, if not my duty, to try to talk to you journeymen with some candor about what is happening to radio and television. And if what I say is responsible I alone am responsible
for the saying of it.
Our history will be what we make of it. And if there are any historians about 50 or 100 years from now and there should be preserved the kinescopes of one week of all three networks they will there find recorded in black and white, and in color evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable, and complacent. We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us then television and those who finance it those who look at it and those who work at it may see a totally different picture too late.
I’ve just started watching this film from Participant Productions about the real-life interaction of Edward R. Murrow and Senator McCarthy during the year 1953. This is an interesting movie to be watching amidst some recent news I’ve heard about a situation in Little Rock (I’ll write more when I have the chance). It seems a common occurance that our media is more often giving us what we want to hear, rather then what we need to hear.
Check out the film, and then Take Action.