The BBC and the Black Weekend: broadcasting the Kennedy assassination and the birth of global television news. Issue 2 (2nd July 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bodroghkozy, Aniko
• Is Part Of: Sixties. Volume 9:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 242
• Page End: 260
• Publication Date: 2016-07-02
• Subjects: John F. Kennedy assassination -- BBC -- Television news -- News coverage of Kennedy assassination -- Kennedy assassination and Britain -- 1960s and television -- television and globalization; Nineteen sixties -- Periodicals; Protest movements -- Periodicals; 909.826
• DOI: 10.1080/17541328.2016.1245909
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1754-1328

Abstract

Abstract: This narrative history of the BBC's coverage of the assassination and funeral of President John F. Kennedy argues that we can trace the beginnings of live, breaking, global television news coverage to this crisis event. The BBC both stumbled in its early coverage and triumphed in its later satellite transmission of the Kennedy funeral, the first truly global use of this new communications technology for news purposes. Using documents in the BBC Written Archive, this article traces the key role played by the BBC in both envisioning and enacting global television news in the decades before CNN made it part of our taken-for-granted media environment.