Classic Media Quotes

Sometimes things come up when you're preparing a presentation and you think --"I've got to capture that someplace so I can find it when I need it" -- that's what this place is for a few superlative quotes I want to have accessible. Maybe you have some related quotes you'd like to add:

1. In a famous speech to the NAB in 1961, Newton Minnow challenged broadcasters to “sit down in front of your television set when you 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 the set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.”
   
2. Edward R. Murrow speaking before the RTNDA in 1958: "We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. 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. We are to a large extent an imitative society. This instrument 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 is merely wires and lights in a box. "
   
3. Writer E.B. White sent a letter to the first Carnegie Commission and gives one of the most eloquent descriptions of his dreams for public television. From September 26, 1966: "Non-commercial TV should address itself to the ideal of excellence, not the idea of acceptability -- which is what keeps commercial TV from climbing the staircase. I think TV should be providing the visual counterpart of the literary essage, should arrouse our dreams, satisfy our hunger for beauty, take us on journeys, enable us to participate in events, present great drama and music, explore the sea and the sky and the woods and the hills. It should be our Lyceum, our Chauteauqua, our Minsky's, and our Camelot. It should restate and clarify the social dilemma and the political pickle. Once in a while it does, and you get a quick glimpse of its potential."
   
4. Ken Burns testifying before Congress in 1999: "...all libraries, archives and historical societies are the DNA of our society, leaving an imprint of excellence and intention for generations to come. It occurs to me, as we consider the rich history of education and service of PBS that we must certainly include this great institution in that list of DNA of our civilization. That we are part of the great genetic legacy of our nation. And that cannot, should not, be denied us or our posterity...we are hardly a "disappearing niche," as some suggest, but a vibrant, galvanic force capable of sustaining this experiment well into our uncertain future."