Edward R. Murrow Quotes

Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn't change people's habits. It just kept them inside the house.

First radio, then television, have assaulted and overturned the privacy of the home, the real American privacy, which permitted the development of a higher and more independent life within democratic society. Parents can no longer control the atmosphere of the home and have lost even the will to do so.

Sometimes I listen to the radio and I can't believe some of the stuff that I'm hearing that everyone is loving. So it's a task that we've got to conquer and we have to make sure that we pass the test.

Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.

I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage. Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.

The BBC is a huge part of the nation's cultural life.

When you change media, perception is changed and then policy is changed.

Films can't change the society; they can simply open the space for the discussion which can lead to social change and can start new forms of social activism.

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

The entertainment industry has an effect on social consciousness.

Sometimes you wonder if television is really affecting the culture.

There's this moment happening in our culture where the power of the audience and the influence that people of color have is undeniable at this point.

Film is one small voice in a great cacophony of noise from newspapers, from the television, from social media, so it can have a little dent, you know? It can help to create a climate of opinion.

Pundits are always blaming TV for making people stupid, movies for desensitizing the world to violence, and rock music for making kids take drugs and kill themselves. These things should be the least of our worries. The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no 'normal,' because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously.

I'd like to say I'd like to be as big as a Gwen or a Madonna, but I think those days of achieving that level are over. The media is bringing everybody down.

I don't think films in and of themselves create radical change, but I think a film can contribute to people's understanding and deepen their understanding and help contribute to a shift.

We need to define what culture is. Every human being lives within a culture, and culture means "To grow in." It means to literally fall, and this is exactly what I believe is happening all around us right now.

In the most basic terms it was about how when we experience art without critical awareness we consent to the ideas being promoted, either intentionally or unintentionally, by the filmmaker. For instance, if you watch a racist comedian and laugh at his jokes, you are consenting to the prejudices inherent within them. Similarly, if you watch a movie which perpetuates conventional ideas about race, gender, etc., you are consenting to them and not affecting change in any way.

We live in an age of rapid mass media, television, Internet. They determine our tempo, not books.

A film is one small voice among other large ones. The film is a tiny part of the discourse. You do what you can but under no illusions of what a film can do.

Television thrives on unreason, and unreason thrives on television. It strikes at the emotions rather than the intellect.

We must, together as a nation, stop watching Fox.

I love museums, and I think they're fantastic, but they don't touch the people who I frequently think need to be touched with at least some reminder of legacy.

It's crazy when you see very little reflection between what's played on the radio and what people are talking about in the streets. It lets you know how far off we are from a real movement.

Television was the most revolutionary event of the century. Its importance was in a class with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press, which changed the human condition for centuries afterward.