Friday, November 22, 2019

Remembering JFK

 
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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