In the aftermath of the assassination last week of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Utah Governor Spencer Cox was not alone in invoking as a comparison point the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Despite countless differences between the two moments, the two killings did leave the American media facing the same dilemma: what to do with gruesome footage of the event.
How the videos spread—or not—reveals crucial differences between that time and ours, and suggests that the owners of social media platforms that allowed the horrifying video of Kirk’s murder to circulate with ubiquity could take a lesson from media outlets of the 1960s.
Video of Charlie Kirk’s shooting circulated quickly and ubiquitously. Mainstream media outlets attempted to shield viewers from the worst of the gore, but it was hard to avoid. On the evening of the event, Anderson Cooper on CNN warned audiences of the disturbing footage he was about to show, and noted that CNN would pause the video just before the shot while continuing to play the audio. Online, however, on platforms like TikTok, X, and Instagram, users were more likely to encounter the distressing imagery—whether or not they specifically sought it out.
Over a half century ago, during the last era of significant political assassination, media companies did not function like today’s social media platforms: they largely shielded Americans from the worst, most shocking and gruesome images of death and murder. The most ubiquitous and instant source of news, network television, didn’t show that kind of footage—despite what some Baby Boomers may think they remember.
The Nov. 22, 1963, killing of President Kennedy traumatized a generation. Older Baby Boomers have often insisted to me that they saw the Zapruder film (the 8mm home movie by Dallas dress manufacturer Abraham Zapruder, who captured most of the event) on TV during the four days of continuous coverage of the event, culminating with Kennedy’s state funeral on Nov. 25.
They did not. Television viewers would not see this footage until 1975, when a late-night show hosted by Geraldo Rivera showed a grainy, bootlegged copy narrated by a couple of conspiracy proponents.
Why didn’t television network news divisions secure rights to show this crucial visual evidence of the crime of the century? For the most part, once network news producers saw it, they balked at the idea of broadcasting such imagery.
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Zapruder was besieged by reporters shortly after he left his filming perch in Dealey Plaza to return to his nearby offices. While Time-Life locked up exclusive print rights by Nov. 24, broadcast rights remained available. Zapruder and his lawyer arranged viewings of the film for news outlets that might want to bid on film or broadcast rights. An ABC producer representing the network who watched the footage eight times declared, “This is the greatest of news films,” but insisted that ABC could not show it to audiences. An NBC producer determined it was “a question of taste; that kind of detail is absolutely unnecessary.”
Only CBS’s Dan Rather aggressively tried to secure broadcast rights. He was stymied by Time-Life. LIFE magazine may have secured print rights, but when the magazine’s publisher C.D. Jackson saw a copy of the 8mm film on Nov. 24, he immediately instructed his representative in Dallas to also negotiate for broadcast rights, even though the magazine company had no use for such rights. Jackson was repulsed at the idea of the film being shown to the public, as was Zapruder, who quickly settled again with Time-Life. When LIFE magazine published its selected black-and-white still frames from Zapruder’s film in its Nov. 29, 1963, issue it notably avoided including the frame of Kennedy actually being shot.
Two days following Kennedy’s assassination, his presumed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was himself assassinated. And it happened live on NBC’s airwaves, as the network decided to carry live the suspect’s transfer from Dallas city jail to county jail. It’s one thing to broadcast disturbing events that a broadcaster doesn’t anticipate. But the networks re-broadcast Jack Ruby’s gunning down of Oswald over and over again, including in the new technology of the time: slo-mo.
Why was that acceptable and not in bad taste? Because it wasn’t gory. There was no noticeable blood. Oswald succumbed neatly.
Such decisions reflected the judgments of network TV personnel around “taste” and just how much disturbing visual material viewers actually needed to see to understand an event. Consider the coverage of violence during the Vietnam War. Baby Boomers also tend to misremember seeing bloody scenes of battle. But with some notable exceptions, particularly during the 1968 Tet Offensive, network news cameras generally got nowhere close enough to combat in order to film blood, guts, and gore.
The summary execution of a Viet Cong lieutenant on the streets of Saigon by South Vietnam’s police chief during the 1968 Offensive was different. The still photo is one of the iconic images of the Vietnam War, but NBC also filmed the killing. Its news personnel debated how much of the footage to show on The Huntley-Brinkley Hour, the network’s top-rated nightly news program. As the lieutenant falls to the ground dead, blood spurts from his head. How long to hold that image? NBC news personnel trimmed and trimmed and trimmed some more. It still shocked audiences—and they complained.
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A few months later, Robert F. Kennedy, running for the Democratic presidential nomination, was felled by an assassin’s bullets right after winning the California primary. There was neither film nor photos of the moment of the assassination, but as he lay on the ground with blood pooling under his head, his final conscious moments were captured on film. And that film was shown repeatedly on television, while still images blanketed newspapers. It was distressing footage, but not grisly.
Would Americans have been better served by having more ready access to the evidence of what political violence looks like? Some commentators have suggested that had Americans had earlier access to the Zapruder film, the conspiracy culture that metastasized around the killing of JFK and the more generalized distrust of institutions that went along with it may not have been quite so powerful. On the other hand, both then and now, ubiquitous access to gruesome and horrifying imagery can have a corrosive social and cultural effect.
Mainstream news outlets, like CNN and the legacy TV network news shows, do still practice some level of gatekeeping. Social media companies, from Meta to X, have largely abandoned any attempt at moderating content on their platforms, having previously (albeit inadequately) attempted some form of fact-checking and take-downs of incendiary material and flagrant disinformation.
Broad majorities of Americans favor content moderation. Perhaps some version of the legacy news media’s model of gatekeeping will eventually have to come to social media. The United States may be entering into an era of heightened political violence and assassination with some echoes to the 1960s. The online media ecosystem of anything-goes-if-it-gets-clicks will only make matters worse. It may finally be time for new norms that treat social media platforms as publishers with some liability for distributing harmful content—and to remember the historical proof that just because video exists, doesn’t mean it needs to be shown.
Aniko Bodroghkozy is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. She is author of Making #Charlottesville: Media from Civil Rights to Unite the Right and is currently finishing a book about television news and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
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