Self-Censorship In JFK TV Treatments Duplicates Corporate Print Media's Apathy, Cowardice

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Washington Post, Five myths about John F. Kennedy, Larry J. Sabato, Nov. 13, 2013. Larry J. Sabato is director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. His latest book is “The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy.”  Myth: Fifty years later, we know everything we’ll ever know about Kennedy’s assassination. Even a half-century later, we don’t have the complete story. This is because many government documents remain classified and hidden. Reputable groups and individuals have estimated that there are 1,171 unreleased CIA documents concerning Nov. 22, 1963. The Center for Effective Government has even claimed that there may be more than 1 million unseen CIA records related to Kennedy’s assassination. No one can close the book on this subject without examining them. The Assassination Records Collection Act, signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, requires that all remaining documents about the Kennedy assassination be released by Oct. 26, 2017. The next president will rule on any requests from the CIA and other agencies that materials be withheld or redacted after 2017. Under the law, the president can do so only if there is “identifiable harm to military, defense, intelligence operations, or conduct of foreign relations, and the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

Broadway World, History to Premiere Two Specials Commemorating JFK Assassination, 11/22, Staff report, Oct. 15, 2013. Fifty years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, about which conspiracy theories still run rampant, there appears to be one thing most Americans now agree on: that shooter Lee Harvey Oswald was telling the truth. According to an eye-opening national survey conducted by History 74% of Americans believe that Oswald was the fall guy for a larger alternate theory. That's just one of the eye-opening findings revealed in "JFK Assassination: The Definitive Guide, a provocative two-hour special that premieres Nov. 22. History polled thousands of Americans -- the most expansive survey on the Kennedy assassination ever attempted, and the first in nearly a decade, representing citizens of every state and covering a wide range of ages and ethnic, economic and educational backgrounds -- to learn exactly what the country does and doesn't believe regarding the shooting on that fateful day in Dallas and who was responsible. Public skepticism of the so-called "Lone Gunman Theory," supported by the Warren Commission in 1964, is shockingly high. A total of 71% of Americans polled now don't believe that explanation. The show explores the myriad alternative theories that Americans find more plausible. It's an entirely new way to look at the assassination: through the eyes of the American people.

Pittsbugrh City Paper, Don’t call them conspiracy theorists: JFK assassination experts come to Pittsburgh, Rebecca Nuttall, Oct. 18, 2013. This week, experts from around the world are in Pittsburgh for “Passing the Torch: An International Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” at Duquesne University. The group of scientific, legal and investigative, scholars, journalists and authors were brought together to discuss what are often referred to as “conspiracy theories.” During a panel discussion at the Senator John Heinz History Center on Oct. 17, examining how the JFK assassination has played out in the media, authors joined director Oliver Stone in indicting the mainstream media for what they believe was a failure to investigate legitimate facts surrounding JFK’s death. “There were leaks all over the place from the beginning of the Kennedy assassination," said David Talbot, founder and former CEO and editor-in-chief of Salon.com. “And yet, the whispers behind closed doors in Washington weren’t getting to the press or weren’t getting reported.” While Stone is well known for his controversial biopic on JFK, the other noted authors, several of whom have worked in the media, have all published work related to the assassination and unpopular theories like those claiming the CIA was involved in Kennedy’s death. Despite reports in the mainstream media, several of the panelists said the CIA’s involvement in Kennedy’s assassination has been proven. “The media has never addressed the idea that operatives in the CIA carried out the assassination of the president,” said Lisa Pease, chief archivist of RealHistoryArchives.com. “If the press had looked seriously at the JFK assassination they would have found conspiracy.” Instead the panelists said the media perpetuated the idea of Lee Harvey Oswald as JFK’s killer in order to help American citizens recover quickly from a devastating tragedy. “The idea is that evil comes out of the murkiness and kills the good,” said Stone. “It’s easy.” And according to the panelists, the media’s negligence continues today. “This case is a microcosm of everything that’s wrong with the media,” said Jerry Policoff, a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the Village Voice.  “In almost all cases, (journalists) stay with the pack,” said Russ Baker, founder of WhoWhatWhy.com, an investigative reporting website. “This is not just about the JFK assassination. These stories are happening all the time.”

CNN, One JFK conspiracy theory that could be true, Thom Patterson, Nov. 17, 2013. During the half century since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, you may have heard about a few conspiracy theories. Decades of investigations, hearings, documents, records, books and interviews have failed to satisfy conspiracy theorists with a definitive answer to The Question: Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone when he shot the President? At one time or another, doubters of the lone gunman theory "have accused 42 groups, 82 assassins and 214 people of being involved in the assassination," said author Vincent Bugliosi. That's a lot of paranoia.

New York Daily News, ‘JFK: The Smoking Gun,’ TV review: David Hinckley, Nov. 2, 2013. An Australian detective concludes that Kennedy died from friendly fire. Reelz puts forward detective Colin McLaren's case that JFK died from an errant Secret Service shot.

LewRockwell.com, The Two NPIC Zapruder Film Events: Signposts Pointing to the Film’s Alteration, Douglas P. Horne (Date Unknown). Douglas Horne was Senior Analyst and then Chief Analyst for Military Records on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) from 1995 to 1998. Most Americans don’t know anything about the two significant events involving the famous Zapruder film of President Kennedy’s Assassination that took place back-to-back, on successive nights, at the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) – in Washington, D.C. – on the weekend immediately following JFK’s assassination. But anyone evenly remotely interested in what is perhaps the key piece of film evidence in the Kennedy assassination – what for decades was viewed as the “bedrock evidence” in the case, the “closest thing to ground truth” – needs to become acquainted with what happened to Abraham Zapruder’s home movie of JFK’s assassination during the three days immediately following President Kennedy’s death.  Why?  Because the hottest debate raging within the JFK research community for the past several years is about whether the Zapruder film in the National Archives is an authentic film from which sound, scientific conclusions regarding JFK’s assassination can be divined, or whether it is an altered film indicative of a government cover-up, which yields tainted and suspect information, and leads us to false conclusions, about what happened in Dealey Plaza.  The resolution of this debate hinges on the answers to two essential questions: First, is the film’s chain of custody immediately after the assassination what it has been purported to be for many years, or is it, in reality, quite different?  Second, are there visual indications within the film’s imagery which prove it has been tampered with, i.e., altered?

Daily Mail, John Kerry doesn't believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot President Kennedy as he says the government investigation didn't 'get to the bottom' of the assassination, Meghan Keneally Nov. 8, 2013. John Kerry has revealed that he does not believe that President Kennedy's assassin worked alone as the government claimed in their official finding. The Secretary of State added more credibility to conspiracy theories surrounding the former president's death by becoming one of the highest-ranking politicians to openly admit to being suspicious of the official finding. 'To this day, I have serious doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone,' Kerry told NBC's Tom Brokaw in an interview timed with the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's death.

•     Secretary of State John Kerry thinks that the shooter was influenced
•     Suggests it has something to do with the time Oswald spent in the Soviet Union and his connections to communist sympathizers
•     Does not support the 'grassy knoll' theory or the idea that the CIA was involved

Parkland -- The Movie -- A Review, Roger Stone, Oct. 30, 2013. I went to see Parkland this past weekend because I was hopeful that director Tom Hanks and his account of the JFK assassination would become as powerful and influential as Oliver Stone's. Parkland deeply upset me. The movie bends the facts and disposes of the evidence. The Warren Commission would be proud of Tom Hanks and this subtle, manipulative, fictional version of JFK's assassination. 

USA Today, 'Parkland' shines new light on Kennedy assassination, Bryan Alexander, July 28, 2013. The 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy continues to prompt controversy regarding motives and means for the killing -- and the implications for history since then to the present.

National Enquirer, 2nd Gunman Named In JFK Assassination! John Blosser and Robert Hartlein, Oct. 23, 2013. Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone – and the Enquirer can finally name the second gunman who fired the fatal shot at President John F. Kennedy from the grassy knoll in Dallas 50 years ago! In a blockbuster exclusive, the Enquirer has learned that a Cuban exile with ties to both the Mafia and the CIA confessed to being involved in a conspiracy to kill America’s beloved 35th president. The startling new evidence was uncovered by re­spected author Anthony Summers, who revealed the assassin’s identity in an update to his classic 1998 book on Kennedy’s slaying, Not In Your Lifetime.

FireDogLake, “Oops I Shot the President” and Other JFK Conspiracies, Lisa Derrick, Nov. 6, 2013. November is conspiracy month, at least on cable TV, and this November there is a richer crop than ever since this is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas Texas at Dealey Plaza. Piers Morgan has already blown CNN’s Kennedy wad by having Oliver Stone as a guest, but expect more from the cable and networks – both pro-conspiracy and pro-lone-nut–later in the month. Cable channel Reelz has taken over from The History Channel and Discovery as the super-conspiracy channel, running a series of documentaries starting out with JFK: The Smoking Gun, which is running through the next two weeks. JFK: TSG‘s theory bolsters the Warren Commission by saying Oswald acted alone to purposefully kill Kennedy, but adds that the shot that shattered the president’s skull was from a different gun using a hollow point fragmentation bullet. Only, that shot wasn’t on purpose.

Selected JFK Films and Videos

Evidence of Revision. Terrence Redmond. Etymon Productions, 2011.

Executive Action. Starring Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan, written by Dalton Trumbo, Donald Freed and Mark Lane, and directed by David Miller. 1973. As described in Wikipedia: The film opened to a storm of controversy over the depiction of the assassination: in some places in the U.S., the film ran only 1 to 2 weeks in movie theaters or got pulled from them altogether. The movie was part fiction, but it would contest other reports of the assassination, including the controversial Warren Commission report of 1964, which led to attacks against the film. The trailers for the film never ran on certain television stations, including WNBC-TV in New York City. The criticism of the film and its suggestion of a Military-industrial complex conspiracy led to the film being removed totally from the movie theaters by early December 1973 and getting no TV/Video runs until the 1980s and mid-1990s, when it got legal release and distribution for TV and video. The film was originally released on November 7, 1973, almost two weeks before the tenth anniversary of the JFK Assassination. Donald Sutherland has been credited as having the idea for the film and for hiring Freed and Lane to write the screenplay.

Into Evidence, Forensic Sciences and Law Education Group, Duquesne University, a Corton Production, 2004.

JFK. Producer and Director Susan Bellows. JFK premieres on American Experience on Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 11-12, 2013, 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET on PBS.

JFK, Producer and Director Oliver Stone, starring Kevin Costner, 1991. The movie's popularity led to the passage of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

Jim Garrison Tapes, The. John Barbour, Blue Ridge/Film Trust, 1992.

JFK: The Smoking Gun. Reelz, 2013. This is based on Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, a 1992 non-fiction book by Bonar Menninger reporting a theory by sharpshooter, gunsmith and ballistics expert Howard Donahue that a Secret Service agent accidentally fired the shot that actually killed President John F. Kennedy.

I Shot JFK: The Shocking Truth. 2013. Convicted felon James E Files, speaking from prison, admits he pulled the trigger from the grassy knoll, and that organized crime figures Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli and Chuckie Nicoletti were behind the hit. This is one of trilogy of Shocking Truth documentaries from producer Wim Dankbaar that includes Confessions from the Grassy Knoll: The Shocking Truth and Spooks, Hoods and JFK: The Shocking Truth.

Men Who Killed Kennedy, The. Actors: Hilary Minster and Robert J. Groden. History Channel, 1988.

Mysterious Death of Number 35, The. Directed by Braddon Mendelson. Noisevision Productions, 2008.

Parkland is a 2013 American historical drama film that recounts the chaotic events that occurred following John F. Kennedy's assassination. From Wikipedia description: The film is written and directed by Peter Landesman, produced by Playtone's Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, and Bill Paxton with Exclusive Media’s Nigel Sinclair and Matt Sinclair. The film is based on the book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, by Vincent Bugliosi. Parkland weaves together the perspectives of a handful of ordinary individuals suddenly thrust into extraordinary circumstances: the young doctors and nurses at Parkland Hospital; Dallas’s chief of the Secret Service; an unwitting cameraman who captured what became the most famous home movie in history; the FBI agents who were visited by Lee Harvey Oswald before the shooting; the brother of Lee Harvey Oswald, left to deal with his shattered family; and JFK’s security team, witnesses to both the president’s death and Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s rise to power. Peter Landesman had an ambitious task with his film Parkland -- finding a fresh look at the thoroughly examined assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The screenwriter and first-time director focused on the smaller players with vital but overlooked roles in the chaotic drama which played out on Nov. 22, 1963.

Untold History of the United States, The, Director: Oliver Stone. Writers: Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick, Matt Graham. Producers: Oliver Stone, Tara Tremaine, Rob Wilson, Carlos Guillermo, Chris Hanley.