When the News Went Live (50th Anniversary Edition)

The minutes, hours, and days after President John F. Kennedy was shot on November 22, 1963 provided no ready answers about what was going on, what would happen next, or what any of it meant. For millions of Americans transfixed by the incomparable breaking news, television for the first time emerged as a way to keep informed. But the journalists who brought the story to the television airwaves could only rely on their skill, their experience, and their stamina to make sense of what was, at the time, the biggest story of their lives. President Kennedy s assassination was the first time such big breaking news was covered spontaneously this book tells the stories of four men who were at the epicenter of it all. Bob Huffaker, Bill Mercer, George Phenix, and Wes Wise were among those responsible for covering the assassination and its aftermath for Dallas s KRLD. These news anchors fed reports and footage to Walter Cronkite and all of the other CBS affiliates around the country. There was often tension between the national reporters and those on the ground in Dallas Dan Rather and his crew of thirty were even briefly denied access to KRLD for feeding Cronkite a story that he knew was false. From the presidential motorcade to Parkland Hospital, from Lee Harvey Oswald s shooting to the trial and lonesome death of Jack Ruby, these men were there, on the inside. The view they were afforded of these events was unparalleled; the tales they have to tell, one-of-a-kind.