Kennedy Assassination Over the Years

Kennedy Assassination

Over the years there have been numerous major events that have influenced the technology and the presentation of the mass media. But there may not be a more significant event than the Kennedy assassination and the impact it made on changing the industry.

The Date That Changed Journalism Forever.

On that dreadful Friday morning, thousands of Americans and many members of the press stood in line just to see President Kennedy's motorcade drive slowly through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas.

Moments later, the President's assassination would change the country and the medium of television forever. After shots were fired, a stunned world would make television its primary source of breaking news, as Dallas journalists found themselves delivering a wrenching story to the American people (JFK: Breaking The News).

In the four days between Kennedy's assassination and his funeral, the foundation was laid for the all-encompassing, 24-hour coverage that is the norm today. Broadcast journalists broke new ground as they kept the nation up-to-date on the rapidly evolving story. The media's coverage of the event made television the nation's primary source of breaking news information (JFK: Breaking The News).

"This was really the event that TV news journalists like to claim brought them to age," says Barbie Zelizer, author of Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the Shaping of Collective Memory (1992). "In 1963 TV journalists were seen as the fluff journalists. Print journalists were the serious journalists. When the Kennedy assassination occurred, of course, TV cameras were able to roll 24/7, and so what you got was an ongoing attentiveness to the event that print could not provide.

"You have to remember that there were very few TV stations, and people had not yet had the kind of event that would cause them to corral around the TV. This was the very first time that TV brought the public together. The first relays of what had happened went out on radio then television media took over.

"Television did what was unthinkable back then -- it stopped all broadcasting and all commercials. It stayed with the story for four days. It did everything it could to provide people with ongoing information. From Friday to Monday it provided the American public with an ongoing visual screen of what was going on in the assassination story" (Zelizer).

Improvements in Media Technology

By the time Kennedy was assassinated the communications satellite Telstar I had just been put in space, followed by other satellites, news reports from around the world could be transmitted directly to a network broadcast center, giving television unprecedented power to communicate major world events in real-time (Television news ).

It might have been the combination of the right timing with this new satellite technology and this horrific event of the President being shot that changed the public interest in complete, live, and around the clock coverage.

The fact that television at that time could bring powerful images of what was happening in the world and could make the incident seem like a local event that was happening in their own home town, was a new concept.

It was also television that brought to the public the first live presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960. Approximately 60% of the households viewed the three debates -- around 60 million people out of a total population of 179 million at that time. Kennedy was the first President that most people felt they had a personal connection with, all because of live TV.

So after the assassination the public couldn't get enough information fast enough. Americans glued themselves to the television and other available media to hear, see, feel, and experience the event because of the interest they had in Kennedy and because of the coverage that was available.

Another reason it was such a large media event was that most Americans weren't even alive the last time a president was assassinated. It had been 62 years since President William McKinley was shot in office. Americans were in shock and disbelief that this could happen in the current times, with all of the precautions of secret service.