CBS has been streaming its entire coverage of the JFK assassination [View all]

[thucythucy]

--four days of black and white TV reporting of the events as they happened--from the first reports of "shots fired at the president's motorcade in Dallas" to the services at Arlington Cemetery this afternoon. Thanks to "Brooklynite" for turning me on to this.

I've been watching off and on since Friday afternoon, and it's been a chilling, sad, sobering experience.

There's lots I could say about this, but one thing that strikes me immediately is how TV news reporting has declined these past five decades. The CBS coverage--warts and all--is on the whole sober, solemn, respectful to both the president and his family, and to the American people. Last night, for instance (which means the night of November 24, 1963), CBS broadcast Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic performing Mahler's Second Symphony (the "Resurrection Symphony&quot in its entirety--perhaps the most stunning and beautiful piece of network TV I have ever seen.

Imagine if the unthinkable were to happen today--imagine how the networks and cable TV would respond. Special logos--"America in Crisis!!!!!!"--special "theme music"--talking heads blathering on about whatever nonsense first comes to mind.

I simply can't imagine any network today--with the exception of C-Span and the possible exception of PBS--following the course of events without breaking in for a "round table" discussion featuring the inane comments of George Will, Ann Coulter, et. al. I can't imagine this kind of somber respect for history as it unfolds. Not that the coverage was perfect--first reports for instance had a Secret Service agent killed with the president--but on the whole what I've seen is head and shoulders above anything I've ever seen on network TV news. And it's not only Walter Cronkite. It's Dan Rather, Roger Mudd...the whole team was superlative.

I think every journalist and every journalism student in America should sit down and watch these four days of continuous TV.

How sad--not only the events themselves, of course--but to think also how TV news has been dumbed down as it has.