JFK & The Press
John F. Kennedy was the first president to use the new medium of
television to speak directly to the American people. No other president had
conducted live televised press conferences without delay or editing.
Between his inauguration on Jan. 20, 1961, until his death in Dallas on Nov.
22, 1963, JFK had held 64 news conferences, an average of one every 16 days.
—John F. Kennedy Presidential Library URL
“[W]hen President Kennedy started televised press conferences,
there were only three or four newspapers in the entire United States that
carried a full transcript of a presidential press conference. Therefore, what
people read was a distillation . . . . We thought that they should have the
opportunity to see it in full.”
—Pierre Salinger (1925-2004),
JFK’s press secretary
In
a December 1962 televised interview, NBC’s Sander Vanocur asked the president
about this view of the press.
“I think
it is invaluable, even though it may cause you . . . it is never pleasant to be
reading things that are not agreeable news, but I would say that it is an
invaluable arm of the presidency, as a check, really, on what is going on in
the administration, and more things come to my attention that cause me concern
or give me information.
“So I
would think that Mr. Khrushchev operating a totalitarian system, which has many
advantages as far as being able to move in secret, and all the rest — there is
a terrific disadvantage not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to
you daily, to an administration, even though we never like it, and even though
we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn’t any
doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very,
very active press.”
—John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), 35th
president of the United States, 1962. Video
• Editorial Comment: Those were the days.
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