Post by John CorbettPost by Steve M. GalbraithPost by John CorbettPost by John Corbetthttp://youtu.be/VabYKkSGqQ0
This video from DVP's archives was posted in another thread. I have seen
numerous clips from this video but this might be the first time I have
viewed the entire video which is a little over three hours long. It opens
with the WFAA anchorman breaking into the regular programming with the
initial newsflash. He doesn't give his name up front and I can't think of
it off the top of my head. He was in Dealey Plaza when the shots were
fired and he estimates he was about 100 yards from the limo when the shots
were fired. He clearly heard three shots. One thing that caught my eye
early on was he took several drags from his cigarette while on the air. I
think even back then that would have been considered bad form. I remember
Walter Cronkite looking back and observing that when he came on the air,
he wasn't wearing his suit coat which he said was also bad form. I guess
these faux pas can be excused due to the nature of the event.
The WFAA anchor said something at about the 27:40 mark which bears
repeating. He cautioned viewers that some of the stories they were getting
were NOT factual. That should be kept in mind as people watch this
coverage. They were feeding unfiltered, unconfirmed reports to the viewers
as soon as they were getting them and not surprisingly, many of those
reports would later turn out to be untrue.
The anchor later gave his name as Jay Watson. I should have been able to
remember that because I knew someone who was also named Jay Watson.
Hopefully I'll be able to remember it in the future.
It's quite obvious from watching this footage that at the time TV news was
not geared to doing unplanned live coverage of an event. They were in
scramble mode and there is footage of people darting back on forth in the
newsroom as they are doing a live feed. Also we see both in the local and
network coverage, anchors are holding headphones to their ears to get the
latest information coming in. I guess in those days they didn't have the
small earpieces that fit inside the ear and they didn't want to go on the
air with the headphones over their heads. When they received a wire photo,
the only way to get it on the air was to print it off, paste it to a
poster board and hold it in front of a camera.
I think given the "crudity" of the technology at that time that they did a
remarkable job. The basics of what happened were reported very quickly and
very accurately. Yes, they got things wrong but not too many. They did
little speculation and very little "analysis" of what the event meant.
Imagine something like this happening today with the reporters we now
have? They would be telling you what you should think about what happened;
they just can't keep their damned opinions out of their stories
anymore.
The NY Times reporter Tom Wicker, who was covering the WH for the paper,
won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. His reports on what happened were
brilliant. Wicker was a Southern liberal but you cannot see a hint of his
politics in any of his stories.
I'll give kudos to Jay Watson for early on issuing the disclaimer that a
lot of the information they were getting was unconfirmed reports and he
had already dismissed the report that 6-8 people had been hit because he
was there and heard just 3 shots. I don't know where they got the idea
that a Secret Service agent had been killed in the attack. That wasn't a
minor error. That was a doozy. At one point somebody even said the
sheriff's office had confirmed it. I find that hard to believe. There was
some top notch reporting going on but there was also some reporting that
can only be described as sloppy. Covering a breaking story is not
something news people had much experience with at that time. Normally they
would spend the day putting a report together to present on the 6:00 news.
Covering a story in real time when it was something that hadn't been
planned in advance was something they would have rarely if ever done
before and in their haste to get information on the air, they forgot good
journalistic practice which is to get confirmation. Anything that was
reported that was unconfirmed should have been noted as such. The did that
when they got the report that the two priests had said JFK was dead. They
waited until the official announcement was made to report that as a fact.
In too many other cases, that were not so cautious.
Jim Ewell, who worked with Aynesworth for the Morning News on the story,
explained that they would collect their notes and send them to the
newsroom for the writers there to write the actual stories. They couldn't
go back to the newsroom and write them themselves since it was a story in
progress. They'd collect information, send it to the newsroom, then go
back and get more information. They did that, he said until they were
exhausted. Aynesworth said this (in "No More Silence"): "I remember people
saying, "There's a Secret Service man that's been shot; Lyndon Johnson's
been hit. I saw him fall over" and things like that. It was just complete
chaos."
And: "A lot of them [i.e., witnesses say they] heard four shots, some
eight, and, of course, many changed their opinions on that. People
disagreed. If you had people who witnessed an automobile accident, I
guarantee you that, if deposed, those five people that day, a week later,
whatever, would have seen five different colored cars, a different time of
day, a different number of people in the car, and you might even find a
puppy dog in one of those car as you did with one of the Kennedy
witnesses."