The Politics of Deception by Patrick J. Sloyan

The UPI coverage of the Kennedy assassination was unparalleled in the history of journalism because of one man. Almost everyone called him that except President Dwight Eisenhower, who always struggled with Smith’s old Georgia family name.

They were riding an emotional rollercoaster set in motion that day by Smitty. Nine minutes later, Walter Cronkite and other anchormen ripped the report clacking out at 60 words per minute on the UPI teletype machine in their offices and relayed it to the world. More than a year later, after hearing from hundreds of witnesses, the presidential commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Kennedy was shot at precisely 12:30 p.m. The time – 39 minutes after noon, central standard time in Dallas – comes from a copy of the A-wire of UPI. That’s nine minutes after a bullet shattered the young president’s brain. I can fix the moment the world became breathless:ġ2:39 CST. Kennedy had been fatally wounded by gunfire in Dallas. It was when the news first came that President John F. There is a generation of men and women around the world who froze, gasped and forever remembered exactly where they were and what they were doing on that day 35 years ago.

It was the night of November 22, 1963, in the UPI Washington bureau. Oddly enough, the welts were proof that it was Smith – not Bell – who had administered an unforgettable beating. He had pulled up his shirt to show the welts on his back from the flailing fists of Jack Bell of the Associated Press. The 20th century’s finest performance by one reporter on a breaking news story ended as Merriman Smith of United Press International stood and tucked in his shirttail.

Sloyan, a UPI reporter in the 1960s, and published in the American Journalism Review in May 1998. This Merriman Smith-Jack Bell story was written by Patrick J. Smith, a gun enthusiast, knew what it was. Smith and Bell heard a bang, followed by two more bangs, that some people thought was a car backfiring. Kennedy’s motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza. Merriman Smith of United Press International and Jack Bell of the Associated Press were riding in the wire car as President John F. One of the great stories of journalists at work came out of Dallas 51 years ago.

The Politics of Deception by Patrick J. Sloyan