CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley says Dallas was blamed unfairly for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but since has become the nation’s go-to site for understanding the event. “Dallas was unfairly maligned over the years—at the time, and even subsequently—unfairly maligned by other parts of the country because of where it happened,” Pelley said here last night after emceeing a fundraiser honoring Jerry Jones. “I think the way Dallas has remembered that with the Sixth Floor memorial and all of that has been so sober, constructive, educational, balanced, that the whole country has looked upon Dallas now as being the place where the history of the assassination is respected and researched and understood better than anywhere else in the country.”
“Every broadcast” at CBS News will be covering next month’s 50th anniversary of the shooting, Pelley said. So looking ahead, how does he see the narrative shaping up? “It’s always a story about loss, but it’s also a story about coming together as a nation,” he said. “It’s a story about lost opportunities and what might have been. I think a lot of people, ever since that day … have wondered how the Vietnam war might have been different, how other aspects of our country might have been different if those shots had not been fired. It just changed so much about American politics. We’re going to try to look back on that and examine that as a turning point and where it took the nation.”
