NBC News in April 1962, by Walter Cronkite. NBC's vice president of news and public affairs, J. Davidson Taylor, was a Southerner who, with producer Reuven Frank, was determined that NBC would lead television's coverage of the civil rights movement. In 1955, NBC provided national coverage of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s leadership of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, airing reports from Frank McGee, then news director of NBC's Montgomery affiliate WSFA-TV, who would later join the network. A year later, John Chancellor's coverage of the admission of black students to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas was the first
Walter Cronkite When, Where, Why?" with that editorial report: Following Cronkite's editorial report, President Lyndon Johnson is claimed by some to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." This account has been questioned in a book on journalistic accuracy. At the time the editorial aired, Johnson was in Austin, Texas attending Texas Governor John Connally's birthday gala and was giving a speech in his honor. In his book "This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV", CBS News correspondent Bob Schieffer, who was serving as a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram when Cronkite's editorial aired, acknowledged