JFK: News of a Shooting – TV review

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/nov/23/jfk-news-of-a-shooting-tv-review

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<strong>JFK: News of a Shooting</strong> (More4) is a familiar story, seen from a new angle – the perspective of the reporters covering it. With no Twitter, journalists had to do some work and actually find out stuff for themselves. That day in Dallas, there were plenty of them already on the scene, travelling with the presidential motorcade from the airport into town.

Without mobile phones, the reporters had to run about looking for phone boxes and or other landlines. These weren't so much borrowed as commandeered. And once you got a hold of a phone you had to hang on to it for dear life, fighting off any other hack who wanted to get his grubby hands on it.

There was one way of securing a line. You asked your office to ring you back and told it not to hang up, ever. So that, even if the man from ABC or whatever wrestled your handset from you, replaced the receiver and picked it up again to dial his office, he'd find your editor still sitting, obstinately, on the line. The only news organisation that he could give his scoop to – about whether a priest had given the president the last rites – was yours. Ha.

The CBS anchor Walter Cronkite is the newsman most associated with that day, and that story. But it wasn't he who broke the news of the president's death. It had already been broadcast on the radio. Cronkite was reluctant to report the news until official confirmation came from the White House – even though CBS's own man in Dallas was telling him that Kennedy was definitely dead. Not bold, then, but measured and calm, and never wrong. It's not the kind of story you want to be wrong about. It's how Cronkite became the nation's dad, and would go on to become the most trusted man in America. Just as Huw Edwards is here.

News of a Shooting is a fascinating tale, about how a tragic story was brought to the world, and about how television became the way all stories would get told.

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