Today, carefully crafted media spin can obliterate the facts of a news story. Although spin has today reached the stage whereby facts of a news story may never emerge, things were a little different on November 22, 1963. The myriad of media sources, including multiple morning and evening edition newspapers with different ownership in various cities, meant that sometimes important news would leak out.
The Dallas Times Herald, an evening paper that served the greater Dallas area and competed with the Dallas Morning News, contains some interesting tidbits in its November 22, 1963 edition, a reprint of which was recently obtained by this editor at the souvenir shop of the “Little White House” in Key West, Florida. It should be noted that one of the reporters for the Times Herald was launched into greater prominence as a result of his coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He is Jim Lehrer, later host of the News Hour on PBS and the moderator of the first presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. The Times Herald, also employed the late Molly Ivins as a columnist from 1981 to 1991 when the paper ceased publication.
The large above-the-fold headline in the Times Herald of November 22, 1963 reads: PRESIDENT DEAD, CONNALLY SHOT,” with the sub-headline: “Johnson Assumes Office.” A lead-in headline reads: “JFK Ambushed in Dallas.”
The paper contains reports that have been largely forgotten, such as the following found on the front page: “There were unconfirmed reports that a Secret Service agent was also killed by gunfire. A spokesman at the Secret Service headquarters at Dallas said could not [sic] confirm or deny the report. ‘All I’ve heard,’ he told newsmen, ‘is the same reports you’ve heard.’”
Lehrer’s story dealt with the security arrangements at the Trade Mart, the venue where President John F. Kennedy was to have spoken. Lehrer wrote: “The Order was issued on the food. The President and his party would receive the same kind of steak as everyone else at the luncheon, his steak selected at random from all the others. The whole crowd would have to be poisoned that way to ensure the death of the President.” The rest of the article praised the Secret Service’s attention to detail, regardless of the fact that the Secret Service’s ineptness or culpability had just permitted the President’s brains to be scattered all over Houston Street.
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