Monday, May 08, 2006

On my television

Edward R Murrow, speech to the Radio-Television News Directors Association, 1958:
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.

*****

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. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference.


Forty-eight years later...

Good night, and good luck.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ahhh...so prophetic.

So what did you think of the movie? I loved it.