Edward R. Murrow, "Wires and Lights in a Box" (1958):
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, at times, demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. The top management of the networks with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the corporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this. ... this nation is now in competition with malignant forces of evil who are using every instrument at their command to empty the minds of their subjects and fill those minds with slogans, determination and faith in the future. If we go on as we are, we are protecting the mind of the American public from any real contact with the menacing world that squeezes in upon us. We are engaged in a great experiment to discover whether a free public opinion can devise and direct methods of managing the affairs of the nation.
https://www.rtdna.org/murrows-famous-wires-and-lights-in-a-b...>
Newton N. Minow, "Television and the Public Interest" (1964):
Your industry possesses the most powerful voice in America. It has
an inescapable duty to make that voice ring with intelligence and with
leadership. In a few years this exciting industry has grown from a novelty
to an instrument of overwhelming impact on the American people. It
should be making ready for the kind of leadership that newspapers and
magazines assumed years ago, to make our people aware of their world. ...
When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your 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 that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.
You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western badmen, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials—many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it.
https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...>
Television technology is inherently antidemocratic. Because of its cost, the limited kind of infomration it can disseminate, the way it transforms the people who use it, and the fact that a few speak while millions absorb, television is suitable for use only by the most powerful corporate interests in the country. They inevitably use it to redesign human minds into a channeled, artificial, commercial form, that nicely fits the artificial environment. Television freewayizes, suburbanizes and commoditizes human beings, who are then easier to control. Meanwhile, those who control television consolidate their power.
Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, Quill Press, 1978, p. 349.
You can look at phenomena such as radicalisation, "QAnon orphans" (or Fox orphans, or right-wing talk-radio orphans), at instances in which new and emerging media played a significant role in radicalising populations (radio in Nazi Germany, under Father Coughlan in the United States, in the Rwandan genocide), the printing press's role in the Reformation and 30 Years' War (see especially Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 1979: https://archive.org/details/printingpressas01eise> and vol. 2 https://archive.org/details/printingpressas02eise>, also McLuhan, Robert W. McChesney's work generally, Chomskey & Herman, Neal Postman, Socrates, Ecclesiates, and many, many more. (I've compiled a bibliography, which could use some updating, here: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_a...>).
Keep in mind that a major factor which makes pre-transition views seem so quaint is that we are living in the world those transitions created. Our world is normal to us, and generally comfortable, acceptable, or at least known, and the concerns seem ... antique. Because in fact they are, and the world from which they were voiced was destroyed and no longer exists.