A CONSPIRACY NUT SAID:
I think I'll go with the early reports (before [the] DPD and [the] Warren Commission started STINKING instead of thinking). The original ABC report said three shots. One Secret Service [agent] killed instantly, JFK and Connally hit. And it all started at Love Field! Where the faking begins is where the truth ends.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Love Field? You're nuts.
Maybe you can start proving your theory by coming up with the death certificate on the Secret Service agent you evidently think was killed.
Since you like some of the initial (and obviously inaccurate) reports that were broadcast on television and radio on 11/22/63, I'm sure you will next be insisting that Lyndon Johnson was shot too (in addition to LBJ suffering a heart attack as well). Right?
There was also a DPD radio report in the first minutes after the shooting that said there was a possibility that perhaps "6 or 7 other people may have been shot" in Dealey Plaza. I imagine you like that erroneous report too.
There was also the incorrect report by Eddie Barker of KRLD-TV that JFK had been transported to Parkland Hospital "by bus". (Maybe bus driver Cecil McWatters, who was nearby, took the President to the hospital.)
Plus, there were several incorrect reports about the President being transferred to an "ambulance" after he was shot. Dan Rather of CBS News, at one point while narrating the large amount of filmed footage that was flowing into the KRLD-TV studios during the afternoon of November 22nd, reported that an ambulance (which was seen departing the emergency entrance at Parkland Hospital in one of the films) was the ambulance that had taken JFK to the hospital. This error, too, is probably one that the conspiracy theorist quoted above would like to believe. (After all, no one was allowed to make ANY mistakes in the TV or radio coverage on November 22. Right?)
And J.D. Tippit apparently was really killed INSIDE the Texas Theater (as erroneously reported by various television and radio outlets on the afternoon of November 22).
And Jean Hill must have been correct about there being "a dog in the middle of the seat" in the Presidential limousine.
And Lee Oswald's real name must actually have been "Lee Harold Oswald" (per Bob Huffaker of KRLD) and/or "Lee Henry Oswald" (per Walter Cronkite of CBS-TV) and/or "Leo H. Oswald" (per another quote by Walter Cronkite).
BACK TO REALITY NOW:
Except for that "by bus" error, I think Eddie Barker was pretty close to being the perfect reporter on 11/22/63. He kept his cool, reported the facts as he knew them, and he was, in fact, the first on-air reporter to announce the death of the President (after he got word at the Trade Mart from a Parkland doctor that JFK had, indeed, died).
All things considered, the TV and radio coverage of the first confusing and hectic minutes and hours following JFK's assassination was extremely accurate coverage for the most part, with all of the television and radio networks and affiliates arriving at the BASIC TRUTH concerning the big-ticket details of the assassination very shortly after the shooting occurred -- with this "basic truth" being:
One person named Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at President Kennedy's limousine from an upper floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building. And that same person named Lee Oswald also shot and killed a police officer in nearby Oak Cliff a short time after JFK was killed.
Those were the first-day FACTS. And those are still the true facts 46 years later.
David Von Pein
October 29, 2009