Around noon on November 22, El Paso time, I hopped a couple of rock walls so I could eat lunch at home, rather than at school, Putnam Elementary in Coronado Hills (if you are from El Paso you know exactly what rock walls are and how easy they are to navigate). Our live-in housekeeper had the Mexican TV news on and I saw images from Dallas reporting that President Kennedy had been shot.

I quickly ate my lunch and rushed back to school, telling everyone on the playground and then in Mrs. Burnam’s 6th grade social studies class what I had seen on TV. Of course no one believed 11-year-old me, at least until an announcement came over the loudspeaker telling us that the President had been shot. We had a moment of silence and some students cried (I don’t remember Mrs. Burnam’s reaction). In a few minutes we were dismissed from school. Being a Friday we had the weekend ahead of us – a weekend with the television on, at least in my house.

My mother was glued to the TV after she got home from work. She watched every single moment she could. In 1963, the information highway was strictly the three TV networks and, in El Paso, morning and afternoon newspapers. And get that information she did (while I was at Sunday school she watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald).

Information in those days was mediated by the newspapers and the TV newscasts, providing us with information that was thought to be balanced. At that point assassination conspiracies were few and far between, relegated to late-night Sunday AM radio broadcasts. We just didn’t question the information we read or heard (maybe that’s why so many people believed Martians were actually invading the earth on October 30, 1938).

Just five years later, in 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey was released, predicting how we would gather information (flat screen tablets) and worry about the impact of artificial intelligence. At 15, I was blown away by the fact that I would be 49 – ancient by my young teen standards. I had no idea how my world, or the world at-large, would change. Or even if I would be functioning or even alive.

As news consumers we saw coverage changing; just look at how TV news was able to report and show the Vietnam War. Would JFK have escalated the war? Jeff Greenfield in Politico questions whether that would have happened. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/22/jfk-assassination-60-anniversary-00128153. But I remember my father telling me that the goal was to end the spread of communism because that was how he was interpreting what he heard on the news at the time. My father believed much of what he heard on TV, in fact when the Medicare prescription drug benefit launched in 2006 he refused to enroll because the Democrats kept saying it was a bad deal – and I was a spokesman for Medicare at the time! (and contrary to his belief, while not perfect, the Part D program is a good deal).

A lot has changed since November 22, 1963. So what do I take away from the past 60 years? First of all, I think I have come to better understand the impact of politics and policy on the American people. Secondly, I have come to see how important it is for me and others to access information that can be used to make right decisions – and I mean decisions that are right for each of us as individuals. And finally, I have seen many of the predictions of 2001 come to fruition.

And you know what? It’s all pretty exciting.