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We Have Currently 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.

-Edward R. Murrow

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We Have Currently A

Edward R. Murrow

...

We Have Currently 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.

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A Reporter Is Always Concerned With Tomorrow. There's Nothing Tangible Of Yesterday. All I Can Say I've Done Is Agitate The Air Ten Or Fifteen Minutes And Then Boom - It's Gone.

We Must Not Confuse Dissent With Disloyalty. We Must Remember Always That Accusation Is Not Proof And That Conviction Depends Upon Evidence And Due Process Of Law. We Will Not Walk In Fear, One Of Another.

A Nation Of Sheep Will Beget A Government Of Wolves.

We Must Not Confuse Dissent With Disloyalty. When The Loyal Opposition Dies, I Think The Soul Of America Dies With It.

We're Not Descended From Fearful Men - Not From Men Who Feared To Write, To Speak, To Associate, And To Defend Causes That Were, For The Moment, Unpopular.

Due Process Of Law

Your Voice, Amplified To The Degree Where It Reaches From One End Of The Country To The Other, Does Not Confer Upon You Greater Wisdom Than When Your Voice Reached Only From One End Of The Bar To The Other.

If Radio News Is To Be Regarded As A Commodity, Only Acceptable When Saleable, Then I Don't Care What You Call It - I Say It Isn't News.

A Thing Of Orchestrated Hell-a Terrible Symphony Of Light And Flame.

Anyone Who Isn't Confused Really Doesn't Understand The Situation.

In Order To Progress, Radio Need Only Go Backward, To The Time When Singing Commercials Were Not Allowed On News Reports, When There Was No Middle Commercial On A News Report, When Radio Was Rather Proud, Alert And Fast.

The Obscure We Always See Sooner Or Later; The Obvious Always Seems To Take A Little Longer.

Fame Is Morally Neutral.

Seldom, If Ever, Has A War Ended Leaving The Victors With Such A Sense Of Uncertainty And Fear, With Such A Realization That The Future Is Obscure And That Survival Is Not Assured.

One Of The Basic Troubles With Radio And Television News Is That Both Instruments Have Grown Up As An Incompatible Combination Of Show Business, Advertising And News. Each Of The Three Is A Rather Bizarre And Demanding Profession. And When You Get All Three Under One Roof, The Dust Never Settles.

Learn Your Language Well And Command It Well, And You Will Have The First Component To Life.

We Will Not Be Driven By Fear Into An Age Of Unreason.

Due Process Of Law

Except For Those Who Think In Terms Of Pious Platitudes Or Dogma Or Narrow Prejudice (and Those Thoughts We Aren't Interested In), People Don't Speak Their Beliefs Easily, Or Publicly.

We Will Not Be Driven By Fear Into An Age Of Unreason, If We Dig Deep In Our History And Our Doctrine, And Remember That We Are Not Descended From Fearful Men ... We Proclaim Ourselves, As Indeed We Are, The Defenders Of Freedom, Wherever It Continues To Exist In The World, But We Cannot Defend Freedom Abroad By Deserting It At Home.

I Am Entirely Persuaded That The American Public Is More Reasonable, Restrained And More Mature Than Most Of Our Industry's Program Planners Believe.

We Cannot Defend Freedom Abroad By Deserting It At Home.

A Satellite Has No Conscience.

The Politician Is Trained In The Art Of Inexactitude. His Words Tend To Be Blunt Or Rounded, Because If They Have A Cutting Edge They May Later Return To Wound Him.

People Say Conversation Is A Lost Art; How Often I Have Wished It Were.

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.

Black And White

Difficulty Is The Excuse History Never Accepts.

I Have Said, And I Believe, That Potentially We Have In This Country A Free Enterprise System Of Radio And Television Which Is Superior To Any Other. But To Achieve Its Promise, It Must Be Both Free And Enterprising. There Is No Suggestion Here That Networks Or Individual Stations Should Operate As Philanthropies. But I Can Find Nothing In The Bill Of Rights Or In The Communications Act Which Says That They Must Increase Their Net Profits Each Year, Lest The Republic Collapse.

We Have Currently 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.

Speaking Of Sir Winston Churchill: He Mobilized The English Language And Sent It Into Battle.

English Language

All Babies Look Like Winston Churchill.

This Instrument [radio] Can Teach. It Can Illuminate, Yes, And It Can Even Inspire. But It Can Do So Only To The Extent That Humans Are Determined To Use It To Those Ends. Otherwise It's Nothing But Wires And Lights In A Box.

Of This Be Wary. Honor And Fame Are Often Regarded As Interchangeable. Both Involve An Appraisal Of The Individual. . . But I Suggest This Difference. Fame Is Morally Neutral.

Our Major Obligation Is Not To Mistake Slogans For Solutions.

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Good Night, And Good Luck.

No One Can Terrorize A Whole Nation, Unless We Are All His Accomplices.

To Be Credible We Must Be Truthful.

We Hardly Need To Be Reminded That We Are Living In An Age Of Confusion - A Lot Of Us Have Traded In Our Beliefs For Bitterness And Cynicism Or For A Heavy Package Of Despair, Or Even A Quivering Portion Of Hysteria. Opinions Can Be Picked Up Cheap In The Market Place While Such Commodities As Courage And Fortitude And Faith Are In Alarmingly Short Supply.

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I Have No Feud, Either With My Employers, Any Sponsors, Or With The Professional Critics Of Radio And Television. But I Am Seized With An Abiding Fear Regarding What These Two Instruments Are Doing To Our Society, Our Culture And Our Heritage.

Everyone Is A Prisoner Of His Own Experiences. No One Can Eliminate Prejudices - Just Recognize Them.

The Fact That Your Voice, Amplified To The Degree Where It Reaches From One End Of The Country To The Other, Does Not Confer Upon You Greater Wisdom Than When Your Voice Reached Only From One End Of The Bar To The Other.

The Obscure We See Eventually. The Completely Obvious, It Seems, Takes Longer.

To Be Persuasive We Must Be Believable; To Be Believable We Must Be Credible; Credible We Must Be Truthful.

If None Of Us Ever Read A Book That Was "dangerous," Had A Friend Who Was "different," Or Joined An Organization That Advocated "change," We Would All Be The Kind Of People Joe Mccarthy Wants.

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All I Can Hope To Teach My Son Is To Tell The Truth And Fear No Man.

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We Cannot Make Good News Out Of Bad Practice.

Tuberculosis, Starvation, Fatigue, And There Are Many Who Have No Desire To Live.

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Just Once In A While, Let Us Exalt The Importance Of Ideas And Information.

The Newest Computer Can Merely Compound, At Speed, The Oldest Problem In The Relations Between Human Beings, And In The End The Communicator Will Be Confronted With The Old Problem, Of What To Say And How To Say It.

We Will Not Be Driven By Fear ... If We Remember That We Are Not Descended From Fearful Men.

Due Process Of Law

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I Was Greatly Influenced By One Of My Teachers. She Had A Zeal Not So Much For Perfection As For Steady Betterment-she Demanded Not Excellence So Much As Integrity.

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A Blur Of Blinks, Taps, Jiggles, Pivots And Shifts ... The Body Language Of A Man Wishing Urgently To Be Elsewhere.

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We Must Not Confuse Dissent With Disloyalty.

Due Process Of Law

It Appeared That Most Of The Men And Boys Had Died Of Starvation; They Had Not Been Executed. But The Manner Of Death Seemed Unimportant. Murder Had Been Done At Buchenwald. God Alone Knows How Many Men And Boys Have Died There During The Last Twelve Years.

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I Would Like Television To Produce Some Itching Pills Rather Than This Endless Outpouring Of Tranquilizers.

We Are To A Large Extent An Imitative Society.

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We Are In The Same Tent As The Clowns And The Freaks - That's Show Business.

When The Politicians Complain That Tv Turns The Proceedings Into A Circus, It Should Be Made Clear That The Circus Was Already There, And That Tv Has Merely Demonstrated That Not All The Performers Are Well Trained.

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