It was 48 years ago yesterday, November 22, 1963, that this
news flash came across the UPI news wires. It would be the start of a day
filled with sorrow, anger and denial. President John F. Kennedy had been shot
by a lone gunman from the sixth floor of the Texas School book depository in
Dallas, Texas. To borrow a phrase from President Franklin Roosevelt, “It would
be a day that lived in infamy”.
News wires at the time were the way that the burgeoning Television
News and its older, more mature big brother, Radio News got their information. This
was back in the day before satellite up links and 24 hour News cycles. They didn’t
have Computers, Social Media, or CNN to get their news stories from.
It would be the job of a person to take stories and type
them onto punch cards. They didn’t have laptops or IPads back in the day. These
stories would then be ready to be transmitted over the “wire”. Then it would be
the job of the Wire Editor to decide which stories would go out to the nation. I
can’t imagine seeing that story and having to remain professional and transmit
that out to the nation. I think that I would have reacted the way the venerable
Walter Cronkite did on that fateful day when he teared up on National
Television.
The Kennedy assassination and subsequent events were the
first truly nationwide story that was broadcast on the national news almost as
it happened. I often wonder today what that story would have been like had it
happened now.
My first question is… would there have been cameras or press
out on the motorcade route with the President? Right now most of the media coverage
on the kind of event that President Kennedy was on is handled by a pool of
print, TV and radio press. You might
have a set of White House reporters that would be in the press room set up for
the event but you would have few if any actual Media traveling in the
Motorcade. With the security that is around the President and their motorcade. It is not real effective to have a whole host
of cameras and reporters travel this way. Most news agencies will send cameras
and personnel to an event location to report from there.
Second, how would the news agencies have even handled this? I
think that once they got wind of the story through their reporters either on
the scene or in the White House. They would have gone “Wall to Wall”, as they
call it, with their coverage. It would not be as tough to get a hold of their
reporters in Dallas because of cell phones. Back in the day a reporter had to
find a land line to report on a story. Then there would also be the satellite trucks
and other current technology that would have made getting the story out that
much easier.
Then there would be the new media… Facebook, Twitter and
other social media outlets. You would be hard pressed to not notice the delay
in the eyewitness reports of people with smart phones or people sitting at
their desks in downtown Dallas. The delay that I speak of would be a delay from
the time people start reporting it on these sites to the time that news
agencies would realize it and start working their sources to verify what they were
hearing on Social Media. You would also have the local and national news
agencies putting tweets and Facebook posts out to “crowd source” the rumors.
I pray that something like this never happens but this kind
of a story will be covered very differently today then the way it was covered
in 1963.
Rest in Peace President Kennedy. God bless you and may God continue to bless America
Be safe folks.
Bryan
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