When I was a little kid, TV was a source of inspiration for me. It was a place where anything could happen, where somebody somewhere's imagination came to life in the form of a television program. I think part of my sunny view of the media back then had a lot to do with the fact that my parents limited what I was exposed to. I grew up on virtuous concepts like friendship, compassion, and doing the right thing. I was a really intellectual and creative kid, so I viewed TV as yet another source of learning. I was exposed to some pretty unique ideas, and helped to form a lot of my style preferences that I currently have in place today: my tastes in art, literature, music etc. was all influenced by what media I was exposed to at an early age. Because of the various aspects of a television series, like plot, character development, things like that, I was able to intuitively understand how to construct my own characters and stories, with depth, complexity and emotion. I did watch more TV than an average child at the time, but I put what I got from TV into action. I'd consider that a positive. Also, because I watched a lot of educational shows, I had an advantage when it came to school, having absorbed a lot of interesting information from a variety of different worldwide sources. Much of my interest in art, science, geography, astronomy, and literature were backed up and built upon by the shows I watched.
Radio is still a positive influence in my life, although admittedly I prefer the control of computer-based listening like iTunes and internet radio now. The ability to have access to music from around the world is an amazing advantage. Unfortunately, though there's a lot of music out there that I'll probably like, wading through the zillions of artists is often a daunting and time-consuming task. Nonetheless, I find it to be a useful tool.
It wasn't until I started growing up a little bit that the media started negatively affecting me more than it was helping me. The onset of 'reality' TV, the distortions and bias in the news, and the often skewed morals of more mature TV shows often work like a form of culture driven propaganda. Media became less a portal to the discoveries of what the world has to offer.
So, I think that while media obviously has a lot of problems (I agree that there's probably more negative out there than positive), I think that if you have good discernment and discretion, the media is a survivable wasteland of information.
At least, that's my opinion
