Bill Mercer (2) (1926–2025)

Those of us of a certain age (or a range of certain ages) are accustomed to the question "where were you when Kennedy was shot?" or "...when you heard that Kennedy had been shot". I was in my 8th grade English class, and I still puzzle over the decision by the school administration to open the public address system and plug the radio broadcasts into it. My school was a K-12 building, but I assume the news was not piped into the elementary classrooms. We were a pretty unsophisticated bunch, show more but the possibility of nuclear attack had been on our minds for several years by this time, and the horror of the event seemed somehow to fit into my world view at the tender age of not-quite-12. Upon reflection now, it is quite apparent that the news reporting of the assassination and its aftermath was entirely unlike anything that might happen in the 21st century. Not just from a technical standpoint, but politically, philosophically and ethically, the world of journalism has changed monumentally in the last 50 years. This book is a collection of re-views of what it was like to be on the scene from 4 men whose job it was to cover the President's visit to Dallas, and who ended up reporting explosive events at a critical moment in history without a template or precedent to guide them. I found it fascinating.
Review written December 2013 show less

Written by 4 journalists who covered that fateful time in history, with a foreword by Dan Rather. This was a truly fascinating look on so many levels at not only the Kennedy assassination, but also the shooting of Lee Oswald and the aftermath of that, all from the perspective of the newsmen. All this was the beginning of live news coverage on the still young medium of tv. All without cable, internet, none of the state-of-the-art technology we take for granted in this day and age. Hard to show more imagine it was only 50 some years ago. It feels like we have come lightyears in technology since then, and we have. Each of the 4 journalists, Bob Huffaker, Bill Mercer, George Phenix and Wes Wise, wrote chapters on their personal positions and involvement. They talked about how they used hand-held 16mm film cameras (no video yet, back then).

From Mercer: "No Satellites for instant reporting from the scene. Take a film camera, shoot the story, run it back to the newsroom, have it processed,, write the story, and time its phrases with a stopwatch to fit the film's shots to the copy. Often you'd edit the film yourself, measuring the length of each shot to fit the number of seconds called for by the narrative. As you cut the pieces that would make the story, you stuck them temporarily to the edge of the editing table, then glued them together -- as fast as possible if you were racing to the deadline."

"The homicide offices were down the hall from our camera, and I stretched a microphone cable the length of the building as close to the wall as possible from the south end to the north, where everyone congregated. As the evening progressed, that cable and I were all over the place...Just after I'd taken my appointed spot at the end of the building where the actors in this drama would be coming and going, an extremely wide-bodied person with a number of still cameras draped over his torso approached me and asked what that cable on the floor was. I explained the production plan , and he told me that if the cable got in his way he would yank it out. I replied that if he did that I would bring my foot-long microphone down on his head. Shortly after that our six-foot plus engineer, Howard Chamberlain, ambled up and asked if there was a problem. I assured him there was no problem, now. This was seat-of-the-pants television reporting. There was no director, except Leigh Webb in our van outside...."

from Wes Wise: "...I sped the five blocks to the television station. As we went, I was unloading the film from the camera, and when we arrived I ran in and handed it to Henk, who put it in the soup. In a few minutes the ten o'clock news was underway...You never know how a film shot under considerable duress will turn out., but I sat down at my Smith-Corona and made an outline with the bare facts of what had happened. When the film emerged from the huge developing machine, I took it from Henk and threaded it, still damp, into the little hand-cranked viewer for editing. 'Wow!'....I rushed the unedited film to the television control room and told the projectionist to put it on the first available projector. Then I ran down the single flight of stairs two steps at a time, raced into the studio, and slipped the barest of outlines to Warren at the news desk."

Honestly, there are so many more quotes I could include here but you get the picture. Technology might make our lives easier in countless ways but those guys were on the cutting edge of history in the making and that they managed to pull it off with the primitive and clunky equipment they had at their disposal, is nothing short of miraculous. I was just about to turn 10 when those days in 1963 were unfolding in our living rooms, but I can remember watching and taking it all in with my parents, as if it were yesterday. I have had a fascination with this time in history ever since. This book was a very good read (published in 2004). show less

On November 21, 1963 President John F. Kennedy arrived in Texas for a two day visit, which was designed to bring together the liberal and conservative wings of the state's Democratic Party, and to gain support for Kennedy's planned campaign for re-election the following year. After successful visits to San Antonio and Houston, President Kennedy and Jackie, his lovely and even more photogenic wife, spent the night in Fort Worth. On the following day, Kennedy gave a breakfast speech in front show more of hundreds of supporters there, then made a short flight to Dallas, where he was to give another speech at the Dallas Trade Mart after a motorcade through the heart of the city.

Dallas had acquired a reputation for extreme right wing activity in late 1963, particularly after United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was heckled, spat on, and struck on the head by a picket sign after a speech he gave there on UN Day, barely a month before Kennedy's planned visit. Several of Kennedy's closest advisers urged him to cancel the Texas trip, or at least his visit to Dallas, as they feared for his safety. However, the President, looking ahead to the 1964 campaign, felt that it was more important to proceed with this visit.

Friday November 22nd was an unusually warm and rainy day in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but by the time Air Force One landed at Love Field the skies had cleared, and the decision was made to remove the bubble top of the presidential limousine, to allow the hundreds of thousands of Dallasites who gathered on the well publicized motorcade route to get a glimpse of the Kennedys as they proceeded from the airport to the Trade Mart.

Television was still in its early stage in 1963, particularly in its coverage of live events. Broadcast cameras consisted of two main types, bulky shoulder models which could capture images but not sound, and even larger ones that had to be connected to news trucks by thick wires, which took many minutes to warm up before they were ready for use. Film from cameras had to be carried back to the news studio for processing, as the use of satellites was at a primitive stage. As a result, most Americans received news coverage via newspaper and radio, until that fateful weekend.

Most of Dallas's local media were out in force to cover the President's visit, including the staff of KRLD, the city's CBS television and radio affiliates. As the news was announced that three shots had been fired at the presidential motorcade and that Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally had been seriously wounded, local and national reporters and cameramen headed en masse in a mad scramble to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where the men were taken, and the Texas School Book Depository, where the shots were fired, while others reported from the Trade Mart as the crowd learned with horror what had taken place.

When the News Went Live is an excellent set of descriptions of the events on that tragic day in November, the subsequent arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, his assassination by local club owner Jack Ruby two days after the president was cut down, Ruby's trial the following year, the effect that the two shootings had on the reputation of Dallas and the United States, and an analysis of how news coverage has changed in the nearly 50 years since then, as told by four members of the KRLD staff: Bob Huffaker, the television reporter who became known to millions of Americans as he described the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald at the Dallas City Jail live on CBS Television; Bill Mercer, who was present during the midnight news conference on Friday where Oswald was interviewed by reporters from all over the world; George Phenix, a newly minted news photographer who captured images at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Oswald's assassination, and Ruby's trial; and Wes Wise, the reporter who was approached by Ruby on the day of Kennedy's assassination, who later became mayor of Dallas, and was instrumental in helping the city's residents heal from the tragedy and in restoring its national reputation.

Huffaker, the author of many of the book's chapters, provides an excellent background of Dallas leading up to the shooting, first hand descriptions of the weekend's events with information that was new to me, and balanced analyses about the city's conservative and extreme right wing elements, along with rebuttals to the misinformation that came out about Dallasites after the shooting, especially the grevious and incorrect report by CBS News that schoolchildren had cheered when they learned of the president's assassination. Huffaker also compares the role of the media in 1963, when most cities had three major television stations and limited ability to cover breaking news stories, and the present day, in which cable news stations provide "strident hypercoverage of celebrity murder and scandal". The book closes with prescient comments by all four men, which provides a superb closure.

When the News Went Live is a valuable addition to the history of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, which provided this reader with new information about that day's events, along with background information that placed this tragic event in greater context. I would highly recommend it to all readers, but especially those who are interested in or remain deeply affected by Kennedy's premature death. show less

Most people in my generation remember the answer to the question: “Where were you when JFK was assassinated?” For many of us who are still around 50 years after the event, those memories are vivid. I recall being dismissed early from school that Friday and rushing home to watch the unprecedented news coverage on our small black and white TV. On Sunday afternoon, I watched the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald broadcast live! The 50th anniversary edition of When the News Went Live chronicles show more those events from the reporter’s perspective. This is not about conspiracy theories, the Camelot mystique, or the internecine strife between the Kennedy and Johnson camps. It is about the transformation that took place in broadcast news in the matter of one weekend.
Living in the age of CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, etc., it seems odd that there was ever a time when there was not wall to wall news coverage. The events in Dallas in November 1963 forced the major networks to reinvent broadcast news. The networks had no connected infrastructure to provide continuous reports on the events as they unfolded that weekend. Networks relied heavily upon local affiliates and newspaper reporters for information. TV coverage was hampered by the bulkiness of cameras and the necessity of cables and cords. It would not be wrong to say that those events caused the major networks to reconsider how news would be gathered and reported in the future.
One interesting note is that none of the contributors to this volume spoke favorably about the 24 hour news networks. Instead of providing a consistently helpful service, these former newsmen feel that news becomes trivialized in these situations. After all, they wonder, are there enough engaging and newsworthy events to fuel 24 hour news?
When the News Went Live takes us inside the nuts and bolts of news coverage 50 years ago. The nation grieved, but to provide us with the coverage of this historic moment, these people had no time to grieve with the rest of the nation. show less