Today of course we reflect on the legacy of the tragic events of November 22, 1963 and the many ways it has impacted our world.
One thing not being discussed as much is how it changed the way we get news.
Although certainly television was a presence in American society before 1963 most people still looked to newspapers for information. Nightly news broadcasts were often just 15 minutes long and served more as a summary.
Indeed it took the networks time to get on the air because they had to turn on and warm up the cameras, they simply didn’t have one on all the time.
But over the next 4 days as the nation mourned they did so in front of their television sets. This was really the first time a major story was covered in such detail on the new medium.
It would still take time for the news to evolve and it would be another 2 decades before CNN came into being. But the world of news would never be the same.