When routine coverage of JFK's Dallas visit suddenly evolved into reporting a worldwide tragedy, KRLD reporters assumed the duty of reassuring a shocked nation and an anxious world. Broadcast journalism came of age in that crisis, and KRLD News earned the profession's highest honor for its on-the-scene reporting. The writers worked in support of Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite as they reported the first on-camera murder and initiated the first continuous live coverage. Reporters who were part of this watershed in broadcast journalism have had four decades to consider events that were too fast and stunning to allow emotional detachment or reflection. They have never written their account of what happened on the scene in Dallas in 1963 until this book, and no other group had quite the behind-the-scene perspectives these four shared.
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Here, finally, is the view from the street about November 22, 1963. This reporters' account of the Kennedy assassination brings to full focus the personal anguish as well as the professional pressure endured that day by those who could not take the time to cry. This book will become part of the real and permanent history of a dark day for America. (Jim Lehrer)
The story they tell is riveting, insightful, and filled with new detail about that awful weekend that changed America. (Bob Schieffer, chief Washington correspondent, CBS News; author of This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV Cbs News)
'The President has been shot!' It has been more than forty years, and everyone old enough remembers what he was doing the day Kennedy died. And then Oswald. But few were close enough to see the whole terrible story unfold. This book brings us a version few have ever seen. Bill Mercer, Bob Huffaker, Wes Wise, and George Phenix lived this story minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. Now they take us live and in living color back to those blood-dimmed days in Dallas. A stunning set of recollections. (James Ward Lee,TCU Press)
As each of the authors gives his account of the segment of the Kennedy assassination he was most involved with—the race to get the injured president to the hospital, Oswald's flight and capture, Ruby's shooting of Oswald and Ruby's trial—he opens a window into the earlier era of broadcast history. The integrity and dedication of these four veteran journalists is impressive, as is their ability to make a 40-year-old event come alive again. (Publishers Weekly)
TV reporters Bob Huffaker, Bill Mercer, George Phenix and Wes Wise combine to recall the assassination of President Kennedy in When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963. These four describe what it was like when reporters did everything, including process and edit, in time for the next newscast.
(Judy Alter The Dallas Morning News)
Their account of reporting events surrounding Kennedy's death goes beyond the mere retelling, reflecting on issues such as ethics and duty in the presentation of news. A fast-paced recounting of what they witnessed, accompanied by 43 evocative black-and-white photos. Thought provoking. (Ari Sigal Catawba Valley Community College Library)
The account of reporting the events surrounding Kennedy's death goes beyond mere storytelling, reflecting on issues such as ethics and duty in the presentation of news. A fast-paced recounting of what they witnessed. (The Muskogee Phoenix and Times Democrat)
Noteworthy. (Si Dunn, Dallas Morning News)
[A] riveting account not only of the assassination but of TV's transformation into America's most dominant news source.
(Sacramento Bee)
Well-documented and credible. A story that needed to be told. (Longview News-Journal)
Huffaker . . . as the main writer of the book, his accounts of that day, and the events following, are both dramatic and detailed. (Rachel Stallard Longview News-Journal)
. . . one of the more engaging books I've come across in some time. . . . Had these four chosen different professions during their younger days, we would all be the poorer for it. This is a first-class account of a tragic historical moment that still has an impact on our nation. (Ken Judkins Little Elm Journal Star)
This work brings immediacy and intensity to events that shook the nation. (Sterlin Holmsely San Antonio Express News)
Theirs is a compelling first person account that is being praised for its depth, authority, and readability. (Big Bend Sentinel)
Their account of reporting the events surrounding Kennedy's death goes beyond mere retelling, reflecting on issues such as ethics and duty in the presentation of news. (Liberty Journal Liberty Journal, RTNDA Communicator)
The reporters . . . have truthfully written about what it was like to be there and witness history at the end of a microphone and live on camera. (Today Midlothian)
[A] fast-paced recounting of what they witnessed. . . . It concludes with two thought-provoking chapters about the business of news and its uncertain future. (Library Journal)
[T]hese four local journalists were changing the face of news minute by minute. (George Mason University Broadside)
As a reporter for KRLD and CBS News, Bob Huffaker broadcast television's first murder when Jack Ruby shot Lee Oswald. He broadcast JFK's ill-fated motorcade, then the sad Parkland Hospital vigil, interviewed the assassin's mother, and covered Ruby's trial and finally his death, having done an award-winning courtroom interview with Ruby. Huffaker and his KRLD News colleagues worked with CBS to bring Texas news to the nation. When broadcasting JFK's Dallas visit suddenly evolved into reporting a worldwide tragedy, they kept as calm as possible, to encourage the world to remain sane.
They earned the nation's highest honor for their on-the-scene reporting, presented by the Radio Television News Directors Association, which wrote, "KRLD deserves the highest praise for the manner in which its personnel moved without a moment of hesitation from what was to have been normal coverage of the arrival, presentation and departure of the President, into fascinating, elaborate, complete and deeply detailed coverage at the local level of what has to be easily the story of our modern lives."
Huffaker enlisted his former colleagues Bill Mercer, George Phenix, and Wes Wise as co-authors of his 2004 book "When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963." Their vivid first-person account is a clear view of the JFK assassination and its aftermath. From interwoven viewpoints at the center of that tragedy, they show what really happened, how they covered the stunning events for the nation, and how broadcast news has developed since.
Bob Huffaker was born in 1936 to Robert S. Huffaker, Sr. and Eunice Jane Thompson Huffaker in Fort Worth, Texas. He grew up in Port Arthur, the Texas center of oil refining, and in Bryan, the Central Texas city adjoining College Station. He earned an Army commission and B.A. in English from Texas A&M University, then served as a Transportation Corps officer, rising to Captain in the U.S. Army Reserve.
He left broadcast news in 1967 and earned the M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Texas and was an English professor at Texas State University until 1980, when, as investigator for the Texas Legislature, he exposed the school for falsifying class records. Now the university honors Huffaker in its Star Hall of Fame for defending press freedom when he headed its student publications committee in the 1970s.
Huffaker was an editor for Texas Monthly, Studies in the Novel, Studies in American Humor, and Modern Humanities Research Association. His widely cited book "John Fowles" (G.K. Hall, 1980) is seminal work about the novelist, and he has written for Southern Humanities Review, Dallas Observer, True West, Senior Advocate, and Texas Parks & Wildlife.
His wife, Dr. Veva R. Vonler, president of the Visual Arts Society of Texas, past chapter president of American Association of University Women, is retired after a career as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at Texas Womans University, where she still teaches poetry. Their son Kevin Huffaker is a sculptor (MonkeyAnvil.com) and Director of Classroom Technologies at Texas State University. Their son Zachary Vonler, who served as a Navy medical corpsman, is a software architect in Austin.
This book is a must-read for journalism students, assassination and history buffs, and all of us who are old enough to remember where we were when we learned that Kennedy had been shot. It's a fascinating study of events surrounding that tragedy from the viewpoint of local TV reporters, with revealing background info on the major players, the journalistic ethics of the day (long since changed, not for the better), disparate views of the city from inside and afar, and an informed look at the origins of some popular conspiracy theories. Bill Mercer's recollection of his interviews on the grassy knoll is particularly touching. For those of us of a certain age, there is an evocation of time and place that stays with the reader long after the book has been finished.
I stayed up all night reading when my copy of When The News Went Live, Dallas 1963 arrived. This book is a classic and should be included in the curriculum of every journalism and political science classroom in America.
Huffaker, Mercer, Phenix and Wise have written the Texas story of the Kennedy assassination, the inside scoop on Oswald's murder and the history of the evolution of modern journalism. These four men were Dallas television reporters, on the scene and on their own, in the middle of the news story of the century.
It is a salute to their training and their integrity as newsmen that their coverage under duress stands today as a compelling rendering of those fateful moments. I am glad they were the early ones on the scene, for they were the ones who broke the news to me in my elementary classroom. The story gives their perspectives more fully; all these years later, this book helps me understand the events and how they affected Texas and the nation.
Bob, Bill, George and Wes were there in Dallas with their Southern sensibilities. They weren't easily pushed around or manipulated that dark day and still aren't. They were taught to tell the truth as objectively as possible, and they reverted to that training and their good common sense when placed in positions lesser men might have blown or exploited. These four men cared about truth and justice and fairness and still do. I hope all young journalists will read this and learn about balanced reporting.
There are so very few books that convey a sense of "being there" when it comes to the Kennedy assassination. This outstanding book takes the reader back to that fateful weekend of November 22nd 1963 in Dallas, Texas and does so in an open, honest and compelling manner.
"When the News Went Live" is written by four journalists who were in Dallas on that day covering the presidential visit. Bob Huffaker and the other three newsmen share many interesting stories that you will not find elsewhere and that have been untold for many years no doubt to all but their personal friends. This is why the book is such a valuable contribution to the historical record. Such first hand observation regarding not just those few seconds in Dealey Plaza, the murder of Officer Tippet and the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, but how in fact the entire story unfolded, makes fascinating reading.
As an aid to anyone interested in the assassination, this book is a must have. I would emphasize - rarely do you find first hand knowledge like this - much of what is written on this subject is written by people many steps removed from the event where fact and fiction merge into one. Not so here. A fabulous book which is refreshingly free of the conjecture and myth that is so common in the Himalayan pile of work on the Kennedy assassination and is highly recommended.
We have become accustomed (yea, verily, some would say desensitized)to horror unfolding before our eyes in our very own living rooms. Bob Huffaker's book brings us back to a time before the desensitization, when we could scarcely believe what our eyes were telling us. I recommend this book highly to those who were there, watching as I was, and even more so to those who were not there. The young, raised in an era of suicide bombers, need to understand that it was not always thus.
The four authors were at the pivot point of American news delivery changing from morning and afternoon newspapers to live television. Forty years later they look back, using contemporaneous recordings and transcripts to describe the events they lived and to reflect on how it changed America and the news. Their insights about Oswald, Ruby and the officials involved bring back a flood of memories; they also enlighten us on how much the media have changed since those dark days and why.
"With three shots from a mail-order rifle, Lee Oswald set off a worldwide tragedy that developed too fast to print. .... Broadcast journalism came of age in that crisis of grief and uncertainty, and as it drew its mourning audience, it helped to hold the nation together." -- Bob Huffaker; From the Preface of "When The News Went Live: Dallas 1963"
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"When The News Went Live: Dallas 1963", published in 2004, paints a vivid word picture of many of the incredible events that surrounded President John F. Kennedy's assassination in November of 1963, as seen through the eyes of four journalists -- Bob Huffaker, Bill Mercer, George Phenix, and Wes Wise -- who covered those events as they happened for CBS affiliate KRLD-TV and Radio in Dallas.
President Kennedy's shocking and appalling assassination on November 22, 1963, was the very first really big "Watch It Unfold Live On TV" news event of the television era, with four full commercial-free days being devoted to nothing but exclusive assassination-related coverage by all three major TV networks (with KRLD's on-the-scene Dallas reporters frequently feeding CBS-TV headquarters in New York)....
And the four reporters whose intriguing stories unfold within this 224-page hardcover volume were right smack in the thick of things during the rapidly-developing events -- from the initial sketchy bulletins that told of the President being shot in Dealey Plaza during a motorcade drive through the city of Dallas -- to the announcement of JFK's death at Parkland Hospital -- to the capture of the accused assassin (Lee Harvey Oswald) in a nearby movie theater -- to Oswald's very own murder on live TV (with Bob Huffaker reporting live from the basement of the Dallas Police Department, where the single gunshot from Jack Ruby's pistol added yet another hard-to-believe chapter to the weekend's nightmarish story).
It was a mesmerizing weekend in American (and television) history, to say the least. And those days are re-lived with clarity in this engaging book by way of the recollections of four men who lived through and reported on those events when they were occurring.
"When The News Went Live" contains several excellent black-and-white photographs, too (some of them I haven't seen published elsewhere).
On a personal level, I have had the pleasure of communicating (via e-mail) with Bob Huffaker several times. He has been very cordial and gracious whenever answering the questions that I had for him. His personal insights into the events revolving around JFK's death are fascinating glimpses into the past, and are insights that I have enjoyed reading immensely.
A sample e-mail excerpt from Mr. Huffaker:
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"David, you're right about the presidential visit and motorcade being the main attraction that all Dallas media were covering, of course. But all our stations had limited capabilities for doing mobile TV, which then demanded either cables or microwave dishes--as well as a receiving dish within line-of-sight beaming or bouncing.
Hence the pool TV arrangements, limited to three planned locations. The local TV stations did live TV from the FTW {Fort Worth} breakfast, Love Field, and the Trade Mart. But this was, indeed, the day the news went live on television, unplanned.
WBAP-TV in Fort Worth had a non-running TV van, which they had towed all the way from Cowtown to Dallas Police headquarters, and we sent both of our KRLD-TV vans into duty--the Bread Truck at DPD and the Blue Goose on the 24th to the county jail, etc.
This was the first time in TV history when on-the-spot news suddenly demanded to go live from the scene. Before that, radio news on-the-spot descriptions such as ours that day were common (like the Hindenburg broadcast--radio only), and live TV was usually reserved for major speeches, sports, etc.
Bob" -- E-mail to this writer; May 30, 2006
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Relating to the subject of "WHEN THE NEWS WENT LIVE", I'd like to offer up the following observations as an extension of this book review.....
To those JFK conspiracy theorists who seem to favor the Oliver Stone-like or Robert Groden-promoted assassination scenarios (that feature a minimum of three gunmen and anywhere from 6 to 10 gunshots being fired at President Kennedy in Dallas' Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963) -- I always suggest to them that they ought to dig up some of the originally-aired "As It Is Happening" live TV or radio broadcasts from that dark Friday in American history.
After performing that exercise of watching a few hours of the November 22 television coverage of the assassination (in real time), or listening to some of the radio broadcasts in real time (which works just as well) -- I challenge anyone to then arrive at the same conclusion that was slapped up on the big theater screen in 1991 via Director Oliver Stone's blockbuster, conspiracy-laden motion picture "JFK".
Watching the day's events unfold "live" in front of you (or listening to them unfold on the radio as it was happening) should, in my opinion, provide everyone with a good general idea of how utterly impossible a task it would have been to have "faked" so much stuff that was being IMMEDIATELY reported to the world on live television and radio within minutes and hours of the President's assassination (and within a very short space of time following Police Officer J.D. Tippit's murder as well).
Via those original live TV/Radio broadcasts, you're not going to hear a SINGLE report that resembles anything close to the Oliver Stone/Jim Garrison-endorsed nonsense of:
"Three gunmen fired six shots at President Kennedy's motorcade today here in Dallas!!"
What you will hear, instead, is live coverage, as it happened, of a ONE-GUNMAN assassination taking place from where the majority of witnesses said it took place (the Texas School Book Depository Building), with no more than three shots having been fired by the SINGLE SHOOTER, which is a shot count that over 91% of the witnesses concur with -- including the small percentage of witnesses who heard only one or two shots, who are witnesses that certainly don't do Mr. Stone's "6-shot ambush" theory any favors.
Upon evaluating virtually all of the TV networks' live assassination footage from November 22nd, 1963, there is no possible way that a reasonable person could arrive at a conclusion that JFK was shot by three assassins, firing from both front and rear. Let alone arriving at an even more-cockeyed "8-to-10-shot" shooting scenario, as purported by Mr. Groden and some other CTers, which is an outlandish conspiracy-flavored scenario that has John Kennedy and John Connally being shot by way more than just the two Warren Commission-backed Mannlicher-Carcano bullets from Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle.*
* = And Mr. Groden's theory (that sports from 8 to 10 gunshots) also features an additional hunk of lunacy, in that Groden thinks it's very likely that NONE of these eight to ten shots came from the "Oswald window" in the Book Depository! (I'm not making this crazy stuff up here. I promise. Anyone who owns a copy of Robert Groden's 1993 book "The Killing Of A President" can check out Groden's preposterous theory for themselves, on pages 20-40.)
The bottom line is -- Very nearly all of the information being reported on TV and radio that November day favored a "Lone Assassin" shooting scenario (including the info concerning the Tippit murder in Oak Cliff), with very little evidence and information being broadcast that would support any type of a "conspiracy" whatsoever; and certainly no "conspiratorial" evidence that has ever panned out and "proved" that a multi-gun plot ended JFK's life in Dallas.
This is quite a telling "One Killer" fact. Because, in my view, if a vast conspiracy and subsequent "cover-up" had been in place on November 22nd (given the immense amount of TV and radio coverage, with reporters scrutinizing everything coming across their desks and digging hard for any type of case-solving clues during those first hours and days after JFK and J.D. Tippit were killed), I think that at least SOME pieces of the conspiracy would have leaked through to the sweeping television and radio coverage surrounding the two Dallas murders.
And I'm guessing that every reporter and newsman in the country (including Messrs. Huffaker, Mercer, Phenix, and Wise) would have loved to dig up some "conspiracy"-proving angle during that weekend in November of '63. Being the person who uncovered such a huge story would certainly be a feather in that reporter's cap, to be sure. But, as it turned out, nothing of that nature occurred....and has yet to occur all these many years later.
To think (as many theorists do) that these conspirators were so smart and so quick to have had the capabilities to immediately eliminate virtually every last scrap of information leading to a conspiracy plot of some kind, making sure that none of the "multi-gunmen shooting event" details seeped through to the media (multiplied by TWO separate murders as well, counting Tippit's!), is to think that any such evil-doers had powers similar to "Superman".
For example -- Almost every one of the initial reports concerning the number of gunshots heard by witnesses stated "3 shots". And while it's true that the very first report of the shooting from UPI's Merriman Smith (which was broadcast over all the television networks) stated "Three shots were fired...", it's also worth noting that Smith's initial bulletin was not the ONLY "three shots" account that was reported during those early hours just after the shooting.
For instance, Jay Watson of ABC affiliate WFAA-TV in Dallas (who happened to be in Dealey Plaza during the shooting and nervously reported the first bulletins to the unaware Dallas TV audience) is heard multiple times on November 22nd saying he heard "3 shots" fired.
Plus, several other members of the media are also on record stating their own PERSONAL beliefs that exactly three shots were fired by the assassin, including Robert MacNeil, Jack Bell, Bob Clark, Jerry Haynes, and Pierce Allman, among still others.
Some of the other "Three Shot" witnesses who were riding right in the Presidential motorcade itself include -- Photographers Tom Dillard, Robert Jackson, Mal Couch, and James Underwood. Plus, both John and Nellie Connally, who were riding in the same car with President Kennedy.
In addition, Presidential aides Ken O'Donnell and David Powers, who were both riding in the Secret Service follow-up car directly behind JFK's limousine, can also be added to the lengthy list of witnesses who heard precisely three gunshots.
And then there's also amateur filmmaker Abraham Zapruder, who took the most famous 26-second home movie in history when he captured the entire assassination with his 8mm Bell & Howell movie camera -- Zapruder showed up on live TV about 90 minutes after the President's murder took place and gave a graphic account of the horrifying event that had taken place in front of his very eyes.
Mr. Zapruder told the WFAA-TV viewing audience that he had heard two or three shots (but definitely no more than three), and he also demonstrated on live television where on the President's head he had seen the effects of the fatal gunshot. Zapruder puts his hand over the right-frontal portion of his own head to demonstrate where he saw the blood coming from JFK's head.
That's pretty amazing "LIVE" stuff from Mr. Zapruder's own lips (within approx. an hour-and-a-half of the assassination). And it's especially incredible and amazing if there had actually been many more than just two or three shots fired at the President, and if the fatal shot had actually (as many CTers believe) caused a huge hole in the BACK of John Kennedy's head, instead of the location where Zapruder placed it on live television -- i.e., the RIGHT SIDE AND FRONT portion of the head.
How could the so-called "conspirators" have possibly gotten THAT lucky with respect to Abraham Zapruder's live "on-the-air" WFAA-TV statements and head-wound "demonstration"? How?
And -- Could these ultra-clever conspirators have somehow managed to "manipulate" several reporters who were relaying the news live to the world immediately after the event, and have them ALL report on hearing just "three shots" (or, in a few cases, hearing only TWO shots, which is a number that certainly does not favor a "Multi-Shooter Conspiracy Plot")?
Or did the plotters just happen to get really, really LUCKY (again) when virtually all of the news reports favored the "Three Shots Fired" conclusion? With this 3-shot scenario matching the precise number of bullet shells that were found on the 6th Floor of the Book Depository after the shooting; and also perfectly matching the exact number of shots heard by TSBD witness Harold Norman, and also perfectly matching the precise number of bullet shells (3) that Norman heard hitting the plywood floor directly above his 5th-Floor location within the Depository.
Which, per Oliver Stone's movie, would mean that a full 50% of the ACTUAL number of gunshots were somehow inaudible to the enormous majority (91%+) of the earwitnesses! And, remember, Oliver has NONE of the shots within his movie's six-shot assassination ambush being "synchronized" in order to merge together with the sound of some of the other shots.
And yet, per Mr. Stone, we're supposed to actually believe that approximately 9 out of every 10 witnesses somehow missed hearing HALF of the gunshots fired that day! A reasonable thing to believe....or not? I ask you.
Were these so-called conspiratorial shooters so good that they could make 4 to 10 shots sound like only three to the vast majority of witnesses scattered all throughout Dealey Plaza? Highly doubtful, to say the least.
Again -- I'd advise all conspiracy theorists to sit down and watch the live TV footage....or listen to some of the surviving 11/22/63 radio tapes....and then try to find a "Multi-Gunmen Conspiracy" lurking within ANY of those original broadcasts. If anybody finds proof of a conspiracy via those means, please let me know. And let the world know too.
