Before the Interweb & Mobiles how did Tony Benn get news of Kennedy’s assassination?
President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas 62 years on 22nd November 1963. If such an event happened today it would be all over screens everywhere.
In 1963 there were TV screens from the BBC and ITV but you had to be sat in front of a set when a programme was on to see it. There was no IPlayer or Watch Again facility.
Tony Benn recorded how he heard the news in his diary for 22/23 November 1963
On the evening of Friday 22nd November Benn was just leaving the house for a meeting in Acton when his son Hilary received a phone call (landline) from a friend who relayed the news about the shooting. Benn switched the TV on to see a newsflash about it and then listened to the 7.30pm news on his car radio on the way to the meeting.
He returned home to watch further TV coverage and noted that George Brown a senior Shadow Minister in 1963 was drunk when interviewed. He then recorded that the Benn family had watched a film transmitted by Telstar during the night on the shooting.
It’s a world of which we can have little conception. Mass media had developed far enough for Benn to get news on TV and via the telephone- two items many did not have in 1963 and via radio which most would have had access to.
Telstar (infact Relay) was the first global communications satellite, launched in 1962, allowing TV coverage to be beamed around the world. Even in 1963 new technology was at work
He must have been psychic!