J. Michael Straczynski Quotes

How can we have critical thinking without being able to quote and being able to compare what happened in the past? Television is dreadfully unrecorded and unquotable.

Even when I started in 1970, I knew that television was having a negative effect on our society.

TV serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse - news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion.

I have a 6-year-old daughter, and we never look through magazines. But when we're on a plane, that's the one time we have screen-time and magazine-time sometimes. And I do not open a magazine with her without saying: 'Now remind me, are these real pictures?'

I don't know if I trust entertainment to teach anyone anything.

The media, and how we're taught to read it, has a huge impact on who we become as people.

I actually think we should be trying to be rigorous in our thinking about television and the way it enters our lives and shapes the way so many people think.

By giving students the proper tools to analyze the media they consume, we can empower them to make informed decisions.

Television makes so much at its worst that it can't afford to do its best.

All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching?

I know that if I had a television in my flat I would convince myself that everything on it was really interesting. I would say, 'I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here!' is so sociologically fascinating that I think I'd better watch.

Television is apparently the enemy of nuance. But nuance is essential for a thoughtful discussion.

I don't watch television, I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself.

I was one of the first generations to watch television. TV exposes people to news, to information, to knowledge, to entertainment. How is it bad?

Television is a very highly constructed, and edited, and censored, and tailored, and marketed reality. But I'm not judgemental about it. I don't have anything against television. I just personally don't feel curious.

Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.

TV news is not very instructive.

Postman is a media analyst and his theory is that television doesn't influence our culture, but that it is our culture and the presidency and anything that relies on television.

Sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you—and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

There's something missing in all this new new media craziness, and that is something that uses celebrity news as a way to get into a really serious analysis of our culture.

Films do have a very big impact on the youth, but the youth do have the quality to differentiate what is right and what is wrong!

It's more necessary than ever before to ensure that discernment and the development of a critical mind guide our take on the world and inform our relationship to the media and information.

People get ideas of how to live or not to live from what you do on television.

I think I look at media differently than anyone older would.

I think there's enough TV that makes people feel dumb out there.