Open to Debate Quotes

“Although cable news has, I believe, done much damage in undercutting civility in political discourse—a civility to which more journalists and newscasters aspired in the pre-cable era—it is insufficient to simply single out blowhards like Bill O’Reilly, or Fox News overlord Roger Ailes, or on the left, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, formerly of MSNBC. The problem is partly that there’s money in staging the televisual equivalent of cockfighting.”
― Heather Hendershot, Open to Debate: How William F. Buckley Put Liberal America on the Firing Line

“Restoring genteel notions of civility to TV will not provide a magic cure for all that ails us politically today. But Firing Line offers a model for what smart political TV once was.”
― Heather Hendershot, Open to Debate: How William F. Buckley Put Liberal America on the Firing Line