Will McDonough Quotes

We spend too much time fretting over the way the industry produces programming, and too little worrying about the way the public consumes it.

Just look at the messages today's media are sending everybody, from TV and commercials to actors and singers. Kids are just drowning in that 24-7 and it's getting really bad.

We need to take on Hollywood. They are poisoning the minds of our kids.

There are those who blame the Press, but in this I think they are mistaken. The Press is such as the public demands, and the public demands bad newspapers because it has been badly educated.

Bad behaviour on TV is quite nauseating and putting off.

We sort of have given up on the idea of taking any sort of personal responsibility for what we see. I don't understand it at all. There are many things that I won't let my kids watch.

When you're young, you look at television and think, there's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.

If the first lady is concerned about this Internet cycle, what would she have done during the heyday when there was 12, 13 editions of a paper in one day? What would she have done with that news cycle?

I don't watch the media that much.

Take responsibility about what you have on your TV, and about what you are out there supporting.

Still, most of those effects occur in the context of harmless play and it is patently obvious that children are not normally turned into aggressive little monsters by TV or video games, since most children do not become aggressive little monsters.

Television has tremendous power over our lives.

I think the problem with visual media like TV is that they're reductive.

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

I think the media needs a little criticizing now, as it did in the '80s, don't you?

That's the scary part about TV, how you'll feel about it in six years.

Television isn't inherently good or bad. You go to a bookstore, there are how many thousands of books, but how many of those do you want? Five? Television's the same way. If you're going to show people stuff, television is the way to go. Words and pictures show things.

Television is a powerful medium that has to be used for something better than sitcoms and police shows. On the other hand, if you don't recognize the forces that play on what people watch and what they don't then you're a fool and you should be in a different business.

Before I was a mom I used to think that parents who worried about their kids watching MTV were just clueless. Now that I'm a mom, I see what the fuss was all about!

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

It is impossible to disregard such an important medium as television. We should know how to use it, learn to work in it and express new values in it.

Hey, if I had my choice for social engineering, I'd declare an automatic R-rating for any movie that depicts television commercials. There's a truly dangerous influence on our children.

Television enjoys a de facto monopoly on what goes into the heads of a significant part of the population and what they think.

I'm concerned about the insidious influence of the media's bad messages that undermine the lessons parents try to instill in their sons and daughters.

You make a choice whether or not to turn that TV on. We didn't even have a television in the house.