Covering the body : the Kennedy assassination, the media, and the shaping of collective memory / Barbie Zelizer.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph. D)--Annenberg School for Communications, University of Pennsylvania, 1990.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-290) and index.

Introduction: Narrative, collective memory, and journalistic authority. -- pt. 1. Contextualizing assassination tales. Before the assassination ; Rhetorical legitimation and journalistic authority. -- pt. 2. Telling assassination tales. "Covering the body" by telling the assassination ; "Covering the body" by mediated assessment ; "Covering the body" by professional forum. -- pt. 3. Promoting assassination tales. De-authorizing official memory: from 1964 to the seventies ; Negotiating memory: from 1980 to the nineties. -- pt. 4. Recollecting assassination tales. The authority of the individual: recollecting through celebrity ; The authority of the organization and institution: recollecting through professional lore ; The authority of the profession: recollecting through history. -- Conclusion: On the establishment of journalistic authority. -- Epilogue: Beyond journalistic authority to the shaping of collective memory.

Covering the Body (the title refers to the charge given journalists to follow a president) is a powerful reassessment of the media's role in shaping our collective memory of the assassination--at the same time as it used the assassination coverage to legitimize its own role as official interpreter of American reality. Of the more than fifty reporters covering Kennedy in Dallas, no one actually saw the assassination. And faced with a monumentally important story that was continuously breaking, most journalists had no time to verify leads or substantiate reports. Rather, they took discrete moments of their stories and turned them into one coherent narrative, blurring what was and was not "professional" about their coverage.