JFK: One PM Central Standard Time

This is a very useful documentary, but in terms of actual history, it goes too far in its salute to Walter Cronkite and CBS News.

Useful parts: Excellent interviews with people who covered the story, including Bob Schieffer, Dan Rather, Robert MacNeil, and the UPI deskman who took the first report from Merriman Smith.

Too far in its hagiography: Millions of people watched NBC that weekend. (And a fair number of people watched ABC.) The great journalists of NBC News, including Frank McGee, Edwin Newman, David Brinkley, and Chet Huntley, were fully as important to America's perception of this event as Cronkite - perhaps more so. The history of the weekend, in terms of TV coverage, is slowly being written to emphasize Cronkite and exclude NBC; this is bizarre and ahistorical. I will note for the record that Huntley-Brinkley beat Cronkite in the ratings for evening news all through the '60s until Huntley decamped for Montana. I grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. KSTP (NBC) was our station of choice for viewing during the terrible weekend of November 22-25, 1963.

At some point in the late '60s or early '70s, NBC erased a lot of videotape from the early and mid '60s. (Johnny Carson never forgave them for that.) I wonder if some of the network's coverage of this weekend was wiped; I've never seen, on YouTube, NBC's superlative coverage of the funeral on Monday.

The description made me think this show was about what happened behind the scenes at the news agencies the day JFK died. It wasn't that at all! It's like a biography and tribute of Walter Crochite. So boring I didn't finish the episode. They should rename this show The Life And Times of Walter Cronchite.

"JFK: One PM CST" is an episode of "Secrets of the Dead" in name only. It lacks the established forensic style of "SotD." Instead it's mostly recreations and archival footage that takes over 90 minutes to say that on November 22, 1963, it was difficult both to determine what happened in Dallas and then to communicate the news to the public. Frankly, from the beginning of history to the present day, when has this ever not been the case with breaking news? And yet this episode treats 11/22/63 as an unprecedented occurrence. My bigger complaint, though, is that the narration makes the claim that Kennedy was on the verge of ending the Cold War when he was killed. To quote "Powerful evidence has emerged that Kennedy was closer than ever before to ending the standoff between the superpowers." That's a very bold statement but, aside from suggesting a joint moon program, absolutely no facts are provided to back it up. Indeed, the follow up footage of Kennedy in Europe shows him strongly criticizing the Soviets. Making such a strong claim and then simply moving on with the story really destroyed this program's credibility with me.

Never been a fan .It suits America, to have sort of nobleman president that wasn't found guilty of corruption .And there's been plenty of them .Including the now deposed Turnip Trump. Yet JFK could probably have been the most corrupt

I can't help but think Walter Cronkite himself - who died well before this film was made - would have found both the premise and production style of this documentary distasteful. It attempts to conjoin an account of JFK's assassination with a hagiography to the famous news anchor and give the word CBS plenty of oxygen too!

As the film progresses it becomes increasingly unedifying as the narrative of the tragedy is interrupted by rather ponderous testimony of interviews of how the day was for the them where the many contemporaries of Kronkite eulogise him, also there's many dramatised sections of their younger selves inserted ... the none too subtle mythologising begins to pall.

When the film repeatedly skips back & forth to the archival footage, eventually of funerals and the young family devastated etc the effect is cumulatively grotesque. So while a terrible tragedy is related in archive footage & voiceover commentary, the newsmen narrative keeps pushing in at disproportionate and inappropriate length. I'm British, I got through it ... but with a measure of culture shock. Only in America?