Howard Metzenbaum Quotes

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.

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

Television and radio do a wonderful job in focusing attention on the problems of our society.

Television is an instrument which can paralyze this country.

Nothing is really real unless it “happens” on television…Television has brought an inversion of our consciousness. When we take our eyes off the tube, we see things that are not quite authentic – or rather, which gain authenticity only by their resemblance to how things happen on television

Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters and somehow we must find some new way of using radio and television to allow us to talk to each other.

Let’s get real. It does make a difference what children see on television.

Television has become the primary precinct of politics.

The fact that television is raising our moral conscience is a good thing.

The newspaper is in all its literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct

Television is not a gimmick, and if you think it is, you’ll lose again.

I think TV, at least most immediately, perhaps more so than film, is a reflection of society.

We need the media as the foundation of functioning institutions.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of media as a tool to encourage civic engagement and participation, and the importance of a diverse and well-informed public.

I don't regard television as the outside world. I regard it as an artefact.

Television is democracy at its ugliest.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education.

There is no dignity in television.

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

I seriously consider television to be the people's medium.

Television is intensely personal.

Television probably has become the most evocative, widely observed signpost we have.

I think that every time you bring a subject into the mainstream landscape of television, it can have a huge impact. Television is such an influential medium.

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.