announcer: "JFK: Breaking the News" is brought to you in part by the Summerlee Foundation, supporting research and education projects on the history of Texas; by the M.R.

& Evelyn Hudson Foundation.

♪♪♪ announcer: And here comes the president of the United States.

It will be an open-limousine parade.

A loud shot.

announcer: Indescribable horror.

Abraham Zapruder: My name is Abraham Zapruder.

Speaker: I had the baby and got on top of him and laid on the grass.

announcer: They think they have this man surrounded.

announcer: Is still in the Texas schoolbook depository building.

announcer: We have just been told the president is dead.

announcer: All of America was seeing around his television set.

Lee Harvey Oswald: And I emphatically deny these charges.

speaker: I focused, and wham.

announcer: Oswald has been shot.

announcer: He is ashen and unconscious.

announcer: The situation is now that man who saw the shot fired said it was fired by a man wearing a black hat.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ John F. Kennedy: Jim Wright, governor, Senator Yarlborough.

Jane Pauley: John Kennedy's 1963 visit to Texas should have been business as usual for American journalism.

Newspapers would deliver comprehensive coverage, radio would trumpet the story live from the scene.

No one expected much more than good pictures from television.

No one imagined everything was about to change.

For local reporters, a presidential visit was simply the hottest story in a long time.

There was a contentious re-election campaign coming, and the famously media-savvy president understood that if he could charm the key swing state of Texas, the entire country would hear about it, in print, most importantly, but also on TV.

announcer: Here's Jackie, and here comes the president of the United States.

Don Carleton: It had already become a big news event.

I mean, of course, it was nothing compared to what was going to happen.

It was seen as a sort of an early--I think an early test case as to how he would be received in a--what the national media still saw as a Southern state.

Mary Ann Watson: There was a lot of right-wing antagonism toward President Kennedy in great deal because of his support of the civil rights movement.

The networks had a sense that something might be in the offing.

Of course, they couldn't possibly have imagined that it would have been as horrible as it was.

Jane Pauley: Since they couldn't be everywhere at once, local TV stations decided to pull their cameras for the Kennedy visit.

Live remote broadcast by microwave took hours to set up.

Bert Shipp: First of all, you had to have this great big old bus, you know.

It had all kind of machines in it, and you had 2-inch tapes, and you used the studio cameras.

It wasn't just the mini-cams like we run around with now.

Jane Pauley: Print reporters needed only a pencil and pad and then a telephone.

Besides, Americans didn't turn to TV for information anyway.

They like their news in print.

Bob Schieffer: People really didn't believe things until they saw it written down in black and white.

These days we tend not to think things were official until we seen them on television.

But in those days it was the printed word that told you this is official.

Jane Pauley: In fact, print journalists doubted their broadcast counterparts did much reporting at all.

announcer: Evening edition news has been a presentation of KRLD News, the recognized leader in the Southwest.

Darwin Payne: If you're a reporter for a newspaper, you wrote a story, and you looked at the television news that night, and you might hear words that were almost identical to what you had written in the paper.

They were pretty much relying on the newspaper to get their news.

Jane Pauley: Critics of television news in 1963 had the same chief complaint as critics today, that broadcasters valued style over substance.

Newspapers could be expected to chronicle Kennedy's Texas trip in detail.

Jim Lehrer wrote for the Dallas Times Herald where the president's arrival was big news.

Jim Lehrer: Number one, he was the president of the United States, number two, we were an afternoon newspaper.

He was going to be in Dallas for a very short time, and he was coming in right at our deadline time, so all of us were involved.

Jane Pauley: As one of the few reporters with no assignment for the president's visit, Dallas Morning News science and space reporter Hugh Aynesworth headed for Dealey Plaza to join the gathering crowd.

[cheering] Hugh Aynesworth: It was just exuberant.

It was like being at the fair or the circus or something like that.

And I heard a couple of people say, you know, with all this ruckus, with all this hatred in this city, I'm just--I'm amazed he came.

I'm amazed he--I'm glad he had the guts, but god, that turned into turmoil real fast.

Jane Pauley: It was exciting to have the whole nation watching Texas, but many in Dallas worried about what the nation might see.

Ultra-conservative fanatics might be planning to embarrass the president or the city hosting him.

And then there was the highly influential Dallas Morning News.

Publisher Ted Dealey encouraged editorials that expressed outrage with the president's foreign policy and his stand on civil rights.

Hugh Aynesworth: We were appalled by some of the things that they believed and wrote, and we knew they were bigots and racists, and we didn't dislike them, we just thought, oh my god, why do we have to work here in that same place?

It was that bad.

Don Carleton: It was very, very rabidly anti-Kennedy, the Dallas Morning News.

It was this kind of heady brew that contributed to this popular image of Te--of Dallas being kind of the capital of the far-right wing.

Jane Pauley: A month before the president's trip, two Dallas civic groups invited UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson to speak, prompting a furious outcry from those opposed to the very existence of the United Nations.

[audience shouting] Adlai Stevenson: Surely, my dear friend, I don't have to come here from Illinois to teach Texas manners, do I?

[audience cheering] Jane Pauley: KRLD TV sports anchor, Wes Wise, pulling double duty to cover news, was the only one rolling film when the wife of a prominent Dallas executive slammed a protest sign onto the ambassador's head.

Wes Wise: He said, "Madam, uh, what can I do for you?

What--what's the problem?"

And she says, "Well, if you don't know, I'm not gonna tell you."

And it was just one of those things--it was--there was no real sense to it, you know.

Jane Pauley: Ambassador Stevenson begged the White House to scratch Dallas from the president's Texas itinerary, but Kennedy wouldn't hear of it.

Jim Lehrer: Remember, at that particular time, Kennedy was not popular in Dallas at all and that it would appear like he was afraid to be seen and all of that, so they talked his folks into a motorcade.

Jane Pauley: Whatever JFK's political opponents had in mind, they were nowhere in sight when Air Force One touched down in Fort Worth late Thursday night.

The thousands who were there seemed to adore him.

The next morning, November 22, 1963, Kennedy walked outside Fort Worth's Hotel Texas before breakfast.

He captivated his audience and the press.

[cheering] announcer: Mr. Kennedy is going right into the crowd.

Mary Ann Watson: Some people think, well, you had this attractive young president and television came along at the same time, and they just sort of melded together.

It's not exactly what happened.

Kennedy understood that there were techniques to the media.

He wanted to find out about camera angles.

He concerned himself with those things.

It wasn't just happenstance that he was so good on television.

announcer: The president of the United States.

Jane Pauley: And then there was Jackie.

The dazzling first lady wasn't at her husband's side as he prepared to make what would be the last public remarks of his life.

Her fashionably late arrival had been planned with the cameras in mind.

Mrs. Kennedy was ready before the breakfast began, but White House aides wanted her to make a grand entrance.

[applauding] announcer: For the ladies in the audience, she's wearing a pink outfit trimmed in black and with the chilly weather outside today, this is probably very appropriate.

John F. Kennedy: Two years ago I said that I introduced myself in Paris by saying that I was the man who had accompanied Mrs. Kennedy to Paris.

I'm getting that somewhat that same sensation as I travel around Texas.

[applauding] Nobody wonders what Lyndon and I wear.

[audience laughing] Jane Pauley: Changing the subject to the communist threat, the president changed his tone too.

John F. Kennedy: People of the United States, but this is a very dangerous and uncertain world.

As I said earlier, on three occasions in the last three years, the United States has had a direct confrontation.

No one can say when it will come again.

No one expects that our life will be easy.

Jane Pauley: Preparing to leave for Dallas after the breakfast, President Kennedy scanned the local papers to find his critics had bought space to send a jeering message.

Darwin Payne: Well, on the morning of the 22nd, the Dallas Morning News had a full page-ad saying in big bold headlines, "Welcome Mr Kennedy."

Of course, that wasn't the real message.

The real message was to be terribly critical of him and to ask demanding questions about why he was soft on the communists in effect.

Hugh Aynesworth: The president said, "Oh my god," you know, "why would a newspaper do something like this?"

And then he shoved it off to Jackie and said, "Oh well," you know, "we're in nut country."

Darwin Payne: And then he made another observation which was very unusual, I think.

He said that it was--anybody could take a shot at a president.

There was no way to protect against that.

Jane Pauley: The morning of the 22nd had been dull and drizzly.

As noon approached, the day was crisp and sunny, much better for the live coverage that resumed as Air Force One landed in Dallas.

announcer: There's Mrs. Kennedy, and the crowd yells.

And the president of the United States.

And I can see his suntan all the way from here.

Jane Pauley: With just one protest sign in sight, the president's detractors seemed to have heeded police orders to stay home.

announcer: The president is up to the fence now shaking hands with people.

The president and his wife are right up on the fence.

This is great for the people and makes the eggshells even thinner for the secret service, whose job it is to guard the man.

And back they go to the car.

Governor Connally standing in the car beaming.

The presidential car moving out.

The president and first lady.

Big beautiful Lincoln followed by a car load of press.

Thousands will be on hand for that motorcade now, which will be downtown Dallas all the way down to the courthouse area which is the end of Main.

It will turn on Houston Street to Elm under the Triple Underpass.

Thousands could already be on the street right now waiting for a view of the president and his wife.

Jane Pauley: KRLD reporter Bob Huffaker stationed himself on the sidelines about half a mile from the end of the parade route.

Bob Huffaker: There was ticker tape flowing from windows.

The school kids showed up.

They climbed all over my mobile unit.

It was just a lovely, beautiful welcome for the president.

announcer: This is a friendly crowd in downtown Dallas as the president and the first lady-- announcer: The president and Mrs. Kennedy riding in the back seat.

They are not using the bubble, so it will be an open limousine parade apparently through downtown Dallas.

announcer: Mrs. Kennedy radiant in that pink outfit and the pink hat, and of course, you can hear the streets around us.

Jane Pauley: Buoyed by the cheers of more than 100,000 people, first Lady of Texas, Nellie Connally, smiled and spoke up.

Nelly Connally: I had just turned around and said to him, "You can't say Dallas doesn't love you, Mr.

President."

That was it.

announcer: It's not known for sure, but it is believed that President Kennedy has been shot.

President Kennedy was in a motorcade en route to the Trade Mart, where he was to address a luncheon gathering shortly after noon today.

This unit is presently en route to Parkland Hospital.

Confirmation will come shortly.

From Dallas, Bob Welch, WBAP Radio News.

speaker: This is an Orlon jacket.

speaker: That's right.

Jane Pauley: 12:30 Friday afternoon, Dallas TV stations were airing regular programming.

Live coverage of the president was set to resume when he began making a speech at the Trade Mart.

speaker: And very often you'll find a zipper hidden in the arm, and-- Jay Watson: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, you'll excuse the fact that I'm out of breath, but about 10 or 15 minutes ago, a tragic thing from all indications at this point has happened in the city of Dallas.

Let me quote to you this.

And I'll--you'll excuse me if I am out of breath.

A bulletin.

This is from the United Press from Dallas: President Kennedy and Governor John Connally have been cut down by assassin's bullets in downtown Dallas.

They were riding an open automobile when the shots were fired.

The president, his limp body carried in the arms of his wife, Jacqueline, has rushed to Parkland Hospital.

Uh, and if you'll excuse me if I give some directions and we talk about what we're gonna do here for the next few minutes, but Bobby, let's tape this, if you please, particularly the interview with the eyewitness people.

It is being taped, good.

Jane Pauley: Much of that coverage was quickly fed from Dallas to the national networks, which were moments away from suspending all regular programming for four days.

announcer: A bulletin from CBS News President Kennedy-- Jane Pauley: With no preparation whatsoever, they would undertake the most massive coverage of any event since the invention of television.

announcer: The president has been hit.

Jane Pauley: Out on the street, print and broadcast journalists scrambled to cover a story that had radically changed.

Hugh Aynesworth: I almost tear up sometimes when I think about what happened and the feeling and the gut wrenching, not knowing what to do.

I didn't have a pencil or paper with me.

I knew I had to start talking to people, but it was so stark and so brutal and a beautiful day just turned into chaos.

Bob Huffaker: For some time, we did not know that the president was dead, and we held on to every hope we could.

And I was aware that we needed to just stay on the air, no matter whether we were repeating ourselves or not.

announcer: Thus far nothing but conjecture as to what has actually happened, where the president has been shot, and how badly he's been wounded.

Jane Pauley: Struggling to set the pace, some wire service correspondents resorted to fist fights over access to telephones.

They called in frantic notes to rewrite editors who rushed to file the first national bulletins.

The first Associated Press report came in two minutes behind UPI's.

Mike Cochran: Bob Johnson turned out a four-line one-paragraph bulletin that was probably a masterpiece.

The copyboy saw it and just screamed, "The president's been shot!"

The magnificence of the bulletin was tempered somewhat by the fact that UPI had beat us to the punch.

Jane Pauley: Mary Woodward, a rookie reporter for the Dallas Morning News was just a few yards from the limousine.

She'd been trying to get the president's attention.

Mary Woodward: This was towards the end of the motorcade, and I wanted so badly to see them face on.

So I yelled out, "Please look this way," and waved, and they did, and I think that may be the last time he looked towards the crowd.

Jane Pauley: Woodward ran back to the newspaper to write her eyewitness account.

Mary Woodward: It was like you'd seen in the movies.

This is what--when you were a kid and thought about becoming a reporter, you thought this is what it's like, with people screaming copy and rushing around to phones.

Jay Watson: Let's turn the mike on.

I can't hear you, Johnny.

What do you want?

You want me to move back a little bit?

Jane Pauley: Television newsrooms were in a frenzy too.

Photographers shooting silent 16-millimeter film had to run their footage back to the station and develop it before it could go out on the air.

While they waited, TV crews pulled eyewitnesses into their studios to recount live what they'd seen.

Jay Watson: Billy, tell me what you saw and what you felt.

What happened to you?

Billy Newman: We were-- we'd just come from-- after seeing the president and the first lady, and we were just in front of the Triple Underpass on Elm Street, and we were at the edge of the curve getting ready to wave at the president when we heard the first shot, and the president-- I don't know who was hit first, but the president jumped up in his seat, and I thought it scared him, thought it was a firecracker, 'cause he looked, you know, fear.

Jay Watson: What was the first thought that struck your mind?

Gayle Newman: I thought it was a firecracker, and I saw the blood, and I had the baby, and I just ran, and we--I got on top of him and laid on the grass.

I was--it just scared me.

It was terrible.

Jane Pauley: Even with dozens of journalists riding in the motorcade, not a single professional photographer captured a clear image of the president at the moment he was shot.

Dallas Times Herald photographer, Bob Jackson, had just finished a roll of film when the bullets rang out.

He remembers looking up at a building used for storing school textbooks.

Bob Jackson: There was a rifle in the window, and I could see him draw it in, and it was quick, and I'm sitting there with an empty camera.

Jane Pauley: But a handful of ordinary people looking only for mementos did have cameras trained on the president's car when the shooting broke out.

Housewife Mary Moorman snapped a Polaroid from a few yards away.

Air conditioning technician Orville Nix shot this much-analyzed film from the south side of main street looking toward a grassy knoll.

But it was a middle-aged clothing manufacturer whose home movie and whose very name would come to be forever linked to the events of November 22nd, 1963.

Jay Watson: May I have your name please, sir?

Abraham Zapruder: My name is Abraham Zapruder.

Jay Watson: And would you tell us your story, please, sir?

Abraham Zapruder: I got out and, uh, about a half hour earlier and getting a good spot to shoot some pictures.

And I found a spot, one of these concrete blocks that I have down near that park near the underpass, and I got on top there, there was another girl from my office.

She was right behind me.

And as I was shooting, as the president was coming down from Houston street making his turn, it was about halfway down there.

I heard a shot, and he slumped to the side like this.

Then I heard another shot or two.

I couldn't say what it was one or two, and I saw his head practically open up, all blood and everything, and I kept on shooting.

That's about all.

I'm just sick, again.

Jay Watson: I think that pretty well expresses the entire feelings of the whole world.

You have the film in your camera.

We'll try to get-- Abraham Zapruder: Yes, I brought it on the studio now.

Jay Watson: We'll try to get that processed and have it as soon as possible.

Right now we have-- Jane Pauley: In fact, it would be 12 years before television would broadcast all 26 seconds of the Zapruder film.

Even though he profited from selling the rights, Abraham Zapruder was deeply disturbed by the nightmare he had captured with his 8-millimeter movie camera.

He didn't even keep a copy of the footage.

A few miles away at the Trade Mart, hundreds of people waiting for the president to arrive began to sense that something was amiss.

announcer: You can see there are small clusters of people gathered around small transistor radios trying-- Eddie Barker: One of the engineers down in the truck called me on the headset and said something has gone wrong, they're headed for the airport.

They didn't stop.

Wes Wise: One of the secret service men kind of was walking fast down the hall, and I stopped and I said, "What's going on?"

And he was one that I'd come to know, and he says the worst has happened.

Bert Shipp: Finally got in the station, told him that I think the president couldn't live with the back of his head gone.

I said go ahead and tell--you know, put it on the air.

He said, "No way."

He said, We announce that somebody was dead and they weren't dead, and he said--our news director said, "No more dead people until we see the death certificate."

And I said, "Well, put me on there."

Jay Watson: This is Bert Shipp.

Bert, we have brought the people pretty much up to date.

Would you tell them exactly what you know as of this point.

Bert Shipp: Well, Jay, I was standing at the Trade Mart waiting his arrival there.

All of a sudden the--we saw them approaching.

They didn't slow down.

As a matter of fact, they were going 70, 80 miles an hour past us.

And then I jumped in a police car and went to Parkland.

This is what I've been told, now, Jay.

President was shot in the head.

Conley was shot in the chest.

Both of them are still alive when I left the hospital.

Jane Pauley: Minutes after the president was carried into Parkland Hospital, reporters and photographers arrived to find an anguished crowd already keeping vigil outside the emergency room.

Bob Huffaker: The limousine's still there, the door's still open.

Lawmakers who had been in the motorcade were stunned and wandering aimlessly around out in the parking lot unable to go inside.

I would stay on the microphone, because we knew that people had to hear what was going on, and people were gonna wanna stick with us.

announcer: What was a wonderful welcome in downtown Dallas has become a scene of indescribable horror as hundreds of people-- Jane Pauley: This was news that would not wait for the evening paper.

Instead, TV cameras effectively put millions of Americans in Dallas to hang on every word as the president's prognosis grew dimmer.

announcer: Faces are ashen white, and people are wondering is our president going to live?

Jay Watson: Congressman Jim Wright of Fort Worth said both Kennedy and Connally were seriously wounded but still alive.

A call has been sent out from some of the top surgical specialists in Dallas, and a call also went out for a priest.

speaker: It's unusual the reaction you get when you receive--when you see someone, well, of course, like the president, such a political figure.

It's almost a, you know, there they were in front of you and I, and it seems to me that the president looked directly as we were applauding--yes, directly, I'd say at you probably, because a little taller than I am.

And there he was, and he waved at you, and then they rounded the corner, and just a few seconds later we heard the shots.

Jane Pauley: Back at the Trade Mart, many of the guests had cleared out, but with both of his station's live remote cameras already set up and running, Eddie Barker decided to stay.

Eddie Barker: This doctor that I knew came up to me and whispered in my ear and told me that he was dead.

Eddie Barker: And who are you, sir?

speaker: I don't want to be identified.

Eddie Barker: We have just been told by a member of the staff at Parkland Hospital the president is dead.

This is the report of a doctor who is on the staff of Parkland Hospital who was here for the luncheon.

He says that the president is dead.

We do not have a confirmation on this.

We only pass it along as the word of a man who we would take to be a good source at this time.

Jane Pauley: Barker's on the spot decision to trust his source earned him a brief exclusive and was later called one of the great snap evaluations of a source in the history of broadcast journalism.

Twenty minutes later, official announcements began to interrupt television broadcasts around the world.

Walter Cronkite: Because it was only on October 24th that our ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, was assaulted in Dallas leaving a dinner meeting there.

From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard time, 2 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago.

Vice President Lyndon Johnson has left the hospital in Dallas, but we do not know to where he has proceeded.

Presumably he will be taking the oath of office shortly and become the 36th president of the United States.

Jane Pauley: Eager to get Lyndon Johnson safely out of Dallas as soon as possible, secret service agents encouraged him to take the oath of office aboard Air Force One.

speaker: I do solemnly swear.

Lyndon Johnson: I do solemnly swear.

Jane Pauley: Minutes later with Kennedy's coffin in the main cabin, the plane took off for Washington.

Realizing he would need to address the nation as soon as possible, the new president made an unusual request from Air Force One.

He wanted live cameras set up to capture his return to the capital.

Mary Ann Watson: He was able to let not only the American people know that an orderly transition of government had taken place, but to let our allies and perhaps more important our enemies know.

Lyndon Johnson: I will do my best.

That is all I can do.

I ask for your help and God's.

Mary Ann Watson: Mrs. Kennedy also had a rather dark awareness of the power of television imagery.

She was urged by Mrs. Johnson that perhaps she would feel better if she cleaned up and changed her clothes, and she insisted that she wouldn't do that.

Jane Pauley: "Let them see what they've done," Jackie told JFK's doctor on the return flight.

The woman best known for her impeccable wardrobe arrived in Washington covered in the president's blood as a global audience looked on in horror.

Even before Jackie Kennedy had boarded the plane for home, the city of Dallas was turning itself inside out in search of her husband's killer.

announcer: Police are now surrounding the area down here.

Sirens are screaming, and evidently police believe that the man who fired the shots is still in the Texas school book depository building.

speaker: Suspect white male, thirties, slender build.

Jane Pauley: The Texas school book depository was obviously a crime scene, but WFAA photographer Tom Alyea and Dallas Morning News reporter, Kent Biffle, were allowed to follow police inside.

Kent Biffle: The police were eager to lock that door behind us, and they did that, and so they were stuck with us.

You know, what were they gonna do, throw us out a window?

speaker: Involving the president, suspect-- Kent Biffle: The manager at the book depository came in and said we had a roll call of the employees after lunch.

There was one employee who turned up missing, Lee Oswald.

speaker: Hello, police operator?

New hit.

Jane Pauley: A little less than an hour after gunshots had turned the exhilaration in Dealey Plaza into chaos, a civilian in the South Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff grabbed a police radio.

speaker: This police officer's just shot.

I think he's dead.

Jane Pauley: Hugh Aynesworth, who had just witnessed the president's murder, joined a handful of other reporters and photographers in a race to the street where officer J.D.

Tippett had been gunned down.

Hugh Aynesworth: I finally found two channel 8 people, WFAA, and we all three went madly toward the Tippet scene.

Vick was leaning out one side, and I was leaning out the other side as we were going through red lights and screaming stop, stop, and we just--we got over there real fast.

Jane Pauley: Staying close enough to hear police radio transmissions, Aynesworth kept pace with the wild search for the assassin playing out on Oak Cliff streets.

speaker: Five-eight, black hair.

Hugh Aynesworth: They had gotten word that a suspect was in a Texas theater.

I ran on in and then they stopped a couple of other people on the way to Oswald.

Jane Pauley: In his haste to follow the action, WFAA photographer Ron Ryland used the wrong camera settings for the dim conditions inside the theater.

But his dark images are the only moving pictures in existence of the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Hugh Aynesworth: And I remember Oswald crying out twice.

He said, "I protest this police brutality," and they did, they bummed him around a lot.

But he was--he had a gun, and he was gonna kill 'em.

announcer: Moments ago, authorities took a young man into custody.

announcer: A white male found in the Texas theater.

He is now en route to the central police station.

announcer: Denied any knowledge of the shooting.

Jane Pauley: Increasingly, print journalists found themselves at a disadvantage.

They would finish writing the story, but the story kept right on going.

Darwin Payne: A little more information would come into the city desk.

That would be added to the story.

They would stop the presses, put on a new front page, and then resume the presses rolling.

Bob Schieffer: The Star Telegram took up a city block in Fort Worth, and people were lined all around the building waiting for the next edition to come out.

When they got an edition, they'd get back in the line so they could get the next edition.

announcer: And there you have the wrap-up.

Jane Pauley: Broadcast audiences had their news delivered live, but the demand for instant information made breaking reports vulnerable to errors.

announcer: May report this bulletin that a secret service agent and a Dallas policeman were shot and killed here today.

announcer: Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Connally might have been wounded.

announcer: A report that Lyndon Johnson suffered a heart attack.

announcer: The vice president was not injured, nor had he had a heart attack as has been reported from some sources.

Hugh Aynesworth: Television even then does something that lessens their credibility.

They'll interview anybody that shows up, and it's of no consequence at all, because maybe these people weren't even there.

Jim Lehrer: The only thing is in the newspaper clippings or on the video library is somebody's idea of what were the facts and what the truth was at a particular moment in time.

It is a contribution to history, but it isn't history, and that distinction always has to be made.

Jane Pauley: With so many reporters out on the field, newsrooms called in every employee on the payroll to help out.

Bob Schieffer was assigned to handle phones on the Fort Worth Star Telegram rewrite desk.

Bob Schieffer: So I just answered the phone, and a woman said, "Is there anybody there who can give me a ride to Dallas?"

And I said, "Lady, you know, the president has just been shot, and besides, we're not a taxi service."

And she said, "Yes, I heard it on the radio."

She said, "I think the person they've arrested is my son," and it was Lee Harvey Oswald's mother.

Jane Pauley: It was not yet a federal crime in 1963 to murder the president of the United States, so the principal investigation fell to Dallas police.

speaker: Full name is Lee Harvey Oswald, O-S-W-A-L-D. announcer: Oswald is carrying a child.

Jane Pauley: Oswald's mother rushed into Dallas police headquarters with Bob Schieffer, but although he delivered her to a place crawling with competitors, he wasn't about to give up his exclusive.

Bob Schieffer: I always wore a snap ram hat so I'd look like a detective.

So I just walked up to the first uniformed Dallas policeman that I saw, and I said, "I'm the one who brought the Oswald's mother over.

Is there any place we can put her so these reporters won't talk to her?"

And he said, "Well, let me see what I can do," and lo and behold, found a little office off the burglary squad asked if that would be all right.

I told him I thought it would, and we put her in there, and then I would go back and forth out into the hallway, gather up the information that our reporters--and by that time we had, I think 16 reporters on the scene--and then go back and use the phone in that little room to phone it in.

So this was a great advantage to us, because we were churning out these extra additions.

Jane Pauley: The citizens of Dallas were horrified to think their city might be held responsible for the president's death.

In the hours following the shooting, they moved quickly from manhunt to mourning to making amends.

Jay Watson: I'd like to speak here for the city of Dallas.

We are ashamed at the moment.

We are stunned.

The whole world is stunned, but at this moment I don't think anybody could be more stunned than the people who live in our city.

Bob Schieffer: I suppose in a way we were defensive, because immediately after this happened, people were convinced this was some sort of a right-wing conspiracy, as it were.

It turned out to be a very left-wing killer, a nut.

announcer: Here is a suspect.

Will you roll it, please?

A suspect is coming.

speaker: Back against the wall.

Lee Harvey Oswald: These people have given me a hearing without legal representation or anything.

speaker: Did you shoot the president?

Lee Harvey Oswald: I didn't shoot anybody, no sir.

announcer: You just heard Oswald who said he did not shoot anybody.

Jane Pauley: After some initial defiance, Lee Harvey Oswald had begun talking to his interrogators mostly to deny any involvement at all in the murders of President Kennedy and Officer Tippett.

By now, those hunting the killer and those hunting the news were so tangled together that police worried reporters might hear Oswald's story first.

speaker: Now, gentlemen, whenever this story's open, we're gonna come to you.

We don't want any of you questioning this.

We don't want any of you pushing.

speaker: Do you mind if we shout a question at him without stopping him?

speaker: I don't want you shouting a question at him, no way.

The more you upset him, the more difficult it is for us to talk.

speaker: Let's make it clear, we have all agreed with the chief that we will not ask Oswald any questions.

Bert Shipp: We were not going to get anything anyhow.

We might as well cooperate a little bit.

Maybe if we go halfway, they'll meet us halfway.

And when he comes out, maybe we can talk to him.

announcer: Oswald been taken into the homicide bureau.

Jane Pauley: By midnight Friday, in the crush of reporters and photographers, there began to appear faces the country would see a great deal more of from that day on.

A young Peter Jennings had come from his native Canada to report the story.

Robert MacNeil was there for NBC, Dan Rather for CBS.

Rubbing shoulders with all the rising young news men was a middle-aged nightclub owner.

Well known locally as a publicity hound, he'd shortened his name from Jack Rubenstein to the flashier Jack Ruby.

announcer: Here he is, a slight fellow with some scratches and marks around his face.

Jane Pauley: Reporters who had waited patiently to interview the world's most infamous suspect were about to get their chance.

speaker: Did you kill the president?

Lee Harvey Oswald: No, I've not been charged with that.

In fact, nobody has said that to me yet.

The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall, uh, asked me that question.

speaker: You have been charged.

Lee Harvey Oswald: Sir?

speaker: You have been charged.

speaker: What did you do in Russia?

speaker: How did you hurt your eye?

Mr. Oswald, how did you hurt your eye?

Lee Harvey Oswald: A policeman hit me.

Jane Pauley: At first, the reporters who swarmed police headquarters tried not to step on one another's toes, but as tempers flared and photographers jockeyed for position, journalists stopped worrying about getting in the way.

They worried about getting the story.

Hugh Aynesworth: And in those days, television cameras weighed an awful lot.

I mean, you had--pretty big burly people usually had to carry them, and man, you get a couple of those bumping a few hundred pounds together, I mean, it was dangerous.

announcer: I'm being pummeled here, being pummeled very heavily.

You just heard-- Jim Lehrer: It was back in the days when reporters had access to everything, so there were no restrictions.

We were everywhere, and there were all kinds of cops and FBI agents and secret service agents and deputy sheriffs.

The place was just crawling with people.

Darwin Payne: And the police chief or Will Fritz or the others would look and wait until the network television cameras were running, and they would speak to the cameras.

speaker: And gentlemen, the reason this is called-- [crosstalk] Have we got one other camera?

speaker: Okay, thank you, sir.

speaker: The purpose of this news conference is to detail some of the evidence against Oswald for the assassination of the president.

Darwin Payne: The real news was going out over television live, and we were suddenly an afterthought.

And I noticed at that time, I thought in my own head, there was a dramatic switch being made.

I suddenly had become secondary instead of a primary participant.

Jane Pauley: Late Saturday night, Dallas police chief, Jesse Curry, instructed journalists to return the following morning to witness Oswald's transfer to the county jail.

Jesse Curry: You men will be here by no later than 10 o'clock in the morning.

That will be enough for you.

Jane Pauley: Exhausted as they were, reporters understood that this was still a volatile breaking story.

Bob Huffaker: There had been so many bomb threats and crazy telephone calls made to every media outlet in town.

We were aware that there was every incentive for some nutty person to try to kill Lee Harvey Oswald.

announcer: Here is Lee Oswald, the ex-marine accused of killing President Kennedy.

♪♪♪ Jane Pauley: On Sunday morning in Washington, 250,000 people filed past the president's coffin in the capital rotunda.

Through the unprecedented live coverage, millions more joined in the painful ritual from home.

Don Carleton: The Kennedy assassination was the first event in American history that we can truly call a collective experience, and television is what gave us this collective experience.

It's sort of in real time or as close to real time as you can have it.

Mary Ann Watson: When you talk to people about what happened that weekend, mostly the memories are sitting with their families watching the coverage, and everything else had been suspended.

Jane Pauley: Perhaps the only people not watching the coverage were those providing it.

In Dallas some 100 journalists jammed themselves into the basement of police headquarters to await Lee Harvey Oswald's transfer to the county jail.

announcer: Extreme precautions have been taken.

The police are worried.

They are so worried, they've talked about the possibility of moving him in an armored vehicle and not just the normal-- speaker: There he is.

Here he comes.

Jane Pauley: At 11:21 Sunday morning, Dallas police brought Oswald out.

After missing the assassination completely, nine news cameras would record what happened next, but only an NBC camera run by engineer Homer Venso was actually live on the air when Oswald stepped into the garage.

Homer Venso: The directors-- since there was only one camera hooked up, he wanted me to have a wide angle lens so that I could get a picture of the overall situation.

You could see the people crowded around there, the police officers, the plainclothes men, and then he says on the air, on my cue, just rack your lens and get a closer shot, then, after we get the establishing shot.

And I just barely got the thing racked and focused and wham.

announcer: There is Lee Oswald.

[gunshot] announcer: He's been shot, he's been shot.

Lee Oswald has been shot.

There's a man with a gun.

It's absolute panic, absolute panic here in the basement of Dallas police headquarters.

The detectives have their guns drawn.

Oswald has been shot.

announcer: Moving down now into the basement, here comes the ambulance, and Oswald will be removed now.

The ambulance is being pulled up in front of us here.

Here comes Oswald.

He is ashen and unconscious at this time.

Now being moved in, he's not moving.

He's in the ambulance now, and attendants, police are quickly climbing in.

They're now heading to remove the armored truck.

Jane Pauley: Viewers had just witnessed the first shooting ever televised live, and journalists who had come from all over the world now became part of the story themselves.

speaker: I think his coat was brown and his hat was black.

speaker: Where did he go, Pierre?

Pierre: Well, he was here.

They just put the gun there.

I saw the flash on the black sweater.

speaker: He put the gun right in his belly.

Pierre: Oh, yeah, right in the-- and the guy, oh!

speaker: Did you see a gun?

Jane Pauley: Minutes after the shooting, back in his dark room, Dallas Morning News photographer Jack Beers made a stunning discovery.

He had a clear photograph of Jack Ruby at the very moment he stepped forward to shoot.

Mike Cochran: We started getting calls in the Dallas bureau and messages, and the gist of it was that the photo that we had picked up from the Dallas News by photographer Jack Beers was absolutely colossal and that they wanted a separate story on that photo.

Jane Pauley: It suddenly seemed print journalism hadn't been eclipsed after all.

Beers's photograph would command the front page of the Dallas Morning News.

But before that edition was even printed, the Associated Press had sent the picture to newspapers around the world, including the competition in nearby Fort Worth.

Bob Schieffer: We had put that copyrighted photo with a proper credit line on the front page of the Star Telegram and got on the streets with it hours before it came out in Dallas's own newspaper, and to us, that was a real scoop.

I was so excited about it that when the delivery truck got to Dallas from Fort Worth, I got a bundle of the newspapers myself and sold them down at Dealey Plaza.

Some of them I gave away, but we were just so proud of getting on the street with that story.

Jane Pauley: But an even bigger scoop was still in the making.

Mike Cochran: We're getting another flurry of messages, and there's a photo from the Dallas Times Herald that is even more dramatic than the previous one.

Bob Jackson: I pulled the film out wet and looked at it in front of a light, and it looked good to me.

Jane Pauley: Snapped just a fraction of a second after Beers, Bob Jackson's photograph was the one that would burn itself into the world's memory of the Oswald murder.

Bob Jackson: It was the timing, 6/10 of a second or whatever.

Jack's position probably caused him to shoot.

He probably saw what was happening faster than I did.

Jane Pauley: Bob Jackson's photograph won the Pulitzer that year.

For Jack Beers who had come so close, there was no second prize.

announcer: And now the ambulance is coming out.

The ambulance with Lee Harvey Oswald, who was shot just a few minutes ago-- Jane Pauley: Just as they had on Friday, reporters sped to Parkland Hospital.

Lee Harvey Oswald was first treated in a trauma room across the hall from the one where John Kennedy had been pronounced dead.

Some of the same doctors and nurses who attended to the president were now struggling to save his accused assassin.

speaker: Oswald expired at 1:07 p.m. speaker: He died?

speaker: He died at 1:07 p.m. Jane Pauley: The suspect in the president's murder was now a murder victim himself.

And so the center of the story moved yet again to 52-year-old Jack Ruby.

Hugh Aynesworth: Jack Ruby was a news groupie, and he was at the Dallas News and Times Herald several times a week trying to get 'em to put pictures of his strippers in the paper.

He wanted to make it big.

He wanted--he always talked about going to Vegas.

He was gonna have a club in Vegas someday.

And I think that plus the weekend of trauma and the feeling in the mood of the city is what made him do what he did.

He thought he would be a hero.

Jane Pauley: Wes Wise ran into Ruby the day after Kennedy's death just outside the Texas school book depository.

Wes Wise: He said something to the effect that I just think it would be awful for Jackie to have to come back here and testify, and tears came to his eyes.

Jane Pauley: Reporters who knew Ruby served as impromptu spokesmen for his family.

The gunman's sister would only grant interviews to journalists she trusted.

speaker: So his sister will be coming out here of the homicide department in a few minutes, and then she will be taken upstairs, and I'm going to go with her to see Ruby upstairs.

She has been acquainted with me for some years and seeing me on television locally here in Dallas.

Jane Pauley: The close contact with Ruby was a journalistic coup for CBS affiliate KRLD and especially for Jim Underwood.

speaker: She knows that he did shoot Lee Oswald.

The man Ruby's sister felt she could count on was the station's weather man.

All that Sunday in print and on TV, Jack Ruby was the news.

On Monday, though, with schools and businesses closed, millions of Americans gathered at home around their television sets to mourn the president.

Don Carleton: What the Kennedy assassination coverage foretold was how effective news could be on a 24-hour, 7-day basis, and I think that that did play a role in what eventually happened with the cable television networks.

Jim Lehrer: Those 72 hours were 72 hours of one of the most momentous stories that had ever happened in our country.

And it was a national outpouring of grief, a national outpouring of curiosity and interest.

It had every element of a major event in the history of the United States of America.

[Sergeant Keith Clark playing Taps] Jane Pauley: Without television, the stark ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery might have included only dignitaries and Kennedy intimates.

Instead, the unblinking lenses of video cameras allowed the entire world to take part in the requiem for John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

speaker: And I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore.

Jane Pauley: In Dallas that morning, cameras also recorded the solemn ceremony for officer J.D.

Tippett.

Among the 5,000 Mourners were hundreds of police officers who had been on duty most of the weekend.

speaker: By the authority of God's divine Word-- Jane Pauley: Lee Harvey Oswald's funeral had been hastily arranged for Monday as well at Fort Worth's Rose Hill cemetery.

Reporters who had been waiting since dawn saw a few mourners and no pallbearers.

Once again, the storytellers would step into the story to carry Oswald to his grave.

Mike Cochran: I didn't volunteer, and a UPI reporter who I had great respect for, Preston McGraw from Dallas, and he stepped forward, and he said, "Well, I'll certainly be a palm bearer."

And so then being with the Associated Press, I had no choice.

I had to say, "Well, I will too."

announcer: This man, whoever's got the TV coverage here will have more of an hour, but it's coming direct, right over TV, live from the scene.

Jane Pauley: The Kennedy assassination ranks among the most wrenching stories this generation of journalists would ever tell, but the reporters who broke the news from Dallas that weekend recognize a curious privilege in bearing witness to a national tragedy.

Jim Lehrer: The Kennedy assassination was a major event in my lifetime, and I was there functioning as a professional, and I'm grateful for that.

Bert Shipp: I was blessed to be able to test my abilities on that story, but I would have rather done it on another story, another time, another place, because it was--yeah, it kind of broke your heart, you know?

'Cause it--you never get prepared for the death of the president of your country.

Bert Shipp: The scene was too gruesome to describe.

Hugh Aynesworth: You look at some of that old footage and you see people like Bert Shipp and other people running in giving a report, my God, they didn't know what they were talking about often, but inside that was some information, and it was instantaneous, and I think they did an amazing job.

Jane Pauley: Coverage of the Kennedy assassination tells the story of a murdered leader, it tells the story of a wounded nation, and it tells the story of a sea change in where Americans would turn in times of crisis.

Bob Schieffer: When all of America was sitting around its television sets watching this horrible event take place, from then on the television became the dominant media.

Don Carleton: Nobody knew if there was a coup d'etat happening, no one knew if we were getting ready to be attacked by nuclear missiles from Soviet Union.

speaker: You've got to keep a level head and hope that the people who are watching you, that you can help them keep a level head.

Don Carleton: It was probably the television news's both locally and nationally finest hour, quite frankly.

announcer: He's in the ambulance now.

Don Carleton: They really did play a very positive role in keeping the country together.

announcer: This will be her last could goodbye for today.

Mary Ann Watson: America looked to television for some sort of reassurance, and that's what television provided, that we were gonna get through this.

Jane Pauley: Over four haunting days, Americans grew to depend on television's unmatched ability to catapult them live to the scene of breaking news.

Unquestionably, print journalism will always do some things better than TV, but on November 22, 1963, when tragedy made a community of a diverse nation, it was television that held that community together.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ announcer: "JFK: Breaking the News" is brought to you in part by the Summerlee Foundation, supporting research and education projects on the history of Texas; by the M.R.

& Evelyn Hudson Foundation.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪