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Malcolm E. Wagner, MD
Rancho Cordova, Calif

JAMA. 1970;211(12):2018.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

I hope you were not serious in your editorial of Nov 17, 1969, when you called television the "pinnacle of civilization." Regular television watchers have been variously rated as having degenerated to a fourth- to sixth-grade educational level. This is confirmed by a poll taken three years ago which found Gunsmoke to be the most watched program.

Television has been the bane of our civilization. It has come between man and wife, and parent and child, thereby reducing opportunity for communications so essential to the mutual understanding necessary for family harmony. Parents can abdicate their responsibility for raising their children. Instead of thinking up things for their children to do or playing with them, they can shoo the children off to watch television. A frustrated child hoping for some parental attention is told to shut up while daddy watches the baseball game on Sunday and mother watches . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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