Replies

I just viewed this week an A&E broadcast from the 25th anniv. which showed all available live NBC broadcast coverage beginning 11 min. after the shots (it took that long to rev up the tape machine). Many eyewitnesses were interviewed by NBC reporters in Dallas and NBC went to the Fort Worth/Dallas affiliate which I believe was WBAP. Jean Hill was interviewed while still at the site. She wore the red coat and was standing with a friend and a dog. She had yelled to JFK to look at the pup. He did, which was the last thing he did. Just as he began to look out the front of the car again, he was shot. The reporter, already having been told that the shots came from the DSBD building asked Jean where the shots came from. She said, why right over there, pointing to the grassy knoll area. The reporter was skeptical and asked her again. She insisted a shot came from directly across from her, on the knoll. She was asked what she did next. She said she ran across the street and up the knoll to see who did it. After she first said the shot was from the knoll, cameras showed the anchor staff at NBC studios (Chet Huntley, Frank McGee) exchanging glances with each other, but they said nothing.

Two reporters in different cars in the motorcade were interviewed. Both separately said they heard two shots coming from above and behind them to the right (DSBD Building) but that there was another shot from a different location. One said it was from the front.

It was announced twice at the time of the Tippit murder, having been confirmed before broadcast, that a Secret Service man was dead. This has been confirmed to me this week on FR by a relative of a Secret Service man on active duty in Nov. 63.

NBC was careful to only broadcast info that was confirmed. You could see from the look in Huntley's eyes that he had real bad news, but the JFK death wasn't announced until confirmation. Dan Rather this week said he knew for 10 or 15 min. before CBS could confirm and announce.

I was amazed at the wealth of info in these first broadcasts. This is info that has been buried ever since. All the witnesses had trouble with investigators. Ridicule, you didn't see this-this is what you saw, etc. in the first hours and days. Many were intimidated.

BTW, the NBC coverage was funny (ha, ha funny). They had primitive equipment, didn't know how to use it, comedy of technological errors. Frank McGee was on a phone connection with Robert Mac Neill who found a phone at Parkland Hospital. Mac Neill would leave to get new info and left the phone with a hospital intern to keep the line open. Most of MacNeill's broadcast wasn't audible, so McGee would parrot to the camera what he was hearing on the phone. At one point the audio returned. You could hear MacNeill but McGee was also repeating what he heard from MacNeill. McGee was not always repeating it exactly--changed words here and there, but nothing sinister.

Anybody who can access tapes of the live 11/22/63 broadcasts won't regret it.

http://www.earthstation1.com/Kennedys/JFKTVCoverage631122a.rm

Re: your uppity comment on it being a comedy of errors (which you've done at least one other time)- You obviously weren't around then. Considering the state of the art of the time, they did a hurculean job.

For all our "advances" nowadays, what do we get except sound bites and crap all over the screen, talkovers, shrinking images, little billboard ads during shows, more ads where credits used to be....