Excerpt from an address to the National Association of Broadcasters, May 9, 1961
Originally published in Equal Time: The Private Broadcaster and the Public Interest. New York: Atheneum, 1964.
Reprinted from Abandoned in the Wasteland: Children, Television, and the First Amendment, 1995.

"When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse."

When John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, he brought to American politics a renewed sense of idealism and commitment...