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| Source:CBS News- anchorman Walter Cronkite announcing the death of President John F. Kennedy, in 1963. |
Source:The Daily Journal
“As The World Turns” was airing on CBS the afternoon of November 22, 1963, when Walter Cronkite broke in to tell the nation that President Kennedy had been shot. Coverage then went back to the soap opera, but not for long. Charles Osgood reports on how America learned of the shooting of a president.”
From CBS News
“Assassination of John F. Kennedy, mortal shooting of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, as he rode in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. His accused killer was Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine who had embraced Marxism and defected for a time to the Soviet Union. Oswald never stood trial for murder, because, while being transferred after having been taken into custody, he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby, a distraught Dallas nightclub owner.”
Newscasters and journalists in general are trained to never show their feelings and give commentary. That old Joe Friday saying of just the facts man. (For all of you Dragnet fans) But these people are exactly that, people and they have feelings too.
When you’re reporting on the death and not just death, but the assassination of someone you personally know, like, respect and even admirer, all things that Walter Cronkite felt about John Kennedy and then throw in the fact they were the same age and from the same generation, how you not show your human side in this situation. This was the first presidential assassination during the network news era. Where most if not all Americans, we’re getting at least part of their news from the networks.
And you are reporting on the assassination of someone who is just 46 and you are same age, to go along with all the other factors, I would’ve been disappointed had Cronkite not given people at least a little into what he was feeling about this horrible tragedy.
Cronkite was at the top of his game during CBS News’s coverage of the JFK assassination that he anchored. And part of Cronkite’s greatness was that he was a human being the whole time and not afraid to let others know that.
There was no precedent for network news to cover presidential assassinations. There hadn’t been a presidential assassination since William McKinley at the turn of the 20th Century. When radio hadn’t even been invented yet. CBS News, NBC News and ABC News, was literally learning how to cover this on the fly.
Walter Cronkite, wasn’t announcing the death of a cab driver who was mugged the night before in his cab in New York City. Not that murder is not important, because of course it would be. He was announcing the death of not just a public servant and public official, or politician, or even a Chief of State, or even a President. He was announcing the death of a President of the United States. He was announcing the death of his own President and President of his own country. A President he personally knew and perhaps even considered a friend. The first time this was ever done on network news and hopefully the last, because this assassination was way too expensive and should have never had happen. And Cronkite deserves a lot of credit for how he handled himself.
