Quotation by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Television enables voters to know their leaders far better than they did when newspapers were the primary source of political information. Television is more pitiless than the press because the moving image is more revealing than the printed word. In earlier times, as that old political stager Harold Macmillan has recalled, "the public character of any leading politician seldom bore any close relationship to his true nature. It was largely represented or distorted by party bias, by rumor, and above all by the Press.... The radio, and especially the television, allow the mass of the public to hear, see, and judge for themselves."