Lights and Wires in a Box

.
The WORDmeister sez: Last night we bought a bunch of pizza and showed George Clooney’s 2005 tribute, Good Night, and Good Luck. As I said to the students beforehand, it is a joy to be reminded why I’m proud of journalism and journalists.

Murrow

“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. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.”

“For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive.

“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. This weapon of television could be useful.”

—Edward R. Murrow, journalist and broadcaster,
speech to the International Radio-Television Society, 1958

• Editorial Comment: But, as CBS President Bill Paley tells Murrow and Friendly in Good Night, “People want to be entertained. They don’t want a civics lesson.” Aye, buckeroos. There’s the rub.

News from our award-winning student news site, The Hard News Café
• Week In Review: HNC Digest (Feb. 20, 2012)
• The Aggie TV News Team (Feb. 15 edition). Bookmark ATV News
• Betty Beecher: Musical excellence is born from love, by Tmera Bradley
• ‘Out of Iraq’ to bear witness those affected by war on conflict’s 9th anniversary
• North Logan council OK’s 64-unit townhouse development, by Steve Kent
• Wellsville to offer emergency responder training to residents, by Jimena Herrero
• Albrecht confident in annual dance with Legislature: ‘We are so good,’ by Natasha Bodily
• Tuition will rise, USU president tells journalism students, by Chris Lee & Tmera Bradley
• 81-year-old motorist injured in Main Street collision with dump truck, by Mary Stocking
• Proposed Rec Center, playing fields depend on $30 student fee vote, by Becca Holliday
• Charles Dickens’ famous works keyed off his own life, professor says, by Sean O’Sullivan
• Journalism students go to ‘war’ with Army ROTC in Green Canyon, by Rhett Wilkinson

PeezPIX by Ted Pease
Catalog here.







Pacific wave patterns.


.