Media: Talk of the Trade: A first for TV

WHERE were the newspaper journalists when Kennedy was shot? Most were chatting to business people at the Dallas Trade Mart, where the President was due to have lunch. A documentary called As It Happened: the Killing of Kennedy, to be shown on Sunday on Channel 4, talks of the assassination as the moment when television replaced newspapers in bringing the news first.

In a New York Times house magazine soon afterwards Tom Wicker, who covered the assassination, says journalists in a press bus saw the President's car speed off, but were unaware of the shooting. What they saw, he says, 'could have happened if someone had thrown a tomato at the President. The press bus in its stately pace rolled on to the Trade Mart.'