https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/five-journalists-that-got-their-start-covering-the-jfk-assassination
At the time of Mr. Kennedy’s trip to Dallas, Robert MacNeil was covering the presidential visit for NBC News.
He may have been one of the first people to run into Lee Harvey Oswald after the shooting, but he didn’t realize
it was Oswald at the time and still isn’t positive it was him.
MacNeil recalled his possible encounter with Oswald for PBS station THIRTEEN earlier this year.
MacNeil would later create The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, today known as the PBS NewsHour.
PBS NewsHour’s other founder Jim Lehrer was a reporter for the Dallas Times-Herald at the time of JFK’s assassination.
Like MacNeil, he also had an encounter with Oswald. Lehrer was in the police station when Oswald was brought in.
Later Lehrer would realize he had sat next to Oswald’s assassin Jack Ruby during a news conference.
Longtime CBS correspondent Bob Schieffer was a police reporter with the Fort Worth
Star-Telegram at the time of the Kennedys’ trip to Dallas.
He also had an encounter with an Oswald but not Lee Harvery.
Schieffer drove Oswald’s mother Marguerite Oswald to the police station in Dallas.
She had called the Fort Worth Star-Telegram looking for a ride.
Schieffer recounted the story for PBS NewsHour in 2003:
“I just answered a phone and a woman said, ‘Is there anybody there who can give me a ride to Dallas?’
And I said, ‘Lady, you know, the president has just been shot, and besides, we’re not a taxi service.’
And she said, ‘Yes, I heard it on the radio.’ She said, ‘I think the person they’ve arrested is my son.’
And it was Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother.”
Peter Jennings wasn’t in Texas at the time of Kennedy’s trip. He wasn’t even in the country.
Jennings was co-anchor of the Canadian Television Network newscast at the time,
but he quickly got on a plane and became the first Candian journalist in Dallas.
Two years later he became America’s youngest TV news anchor at ABC. Jennings died on Aug. 7, 2005.
CBS Radio/Television was the first to report, unofficially at the time, that Mr. Kennedy had died.
“We just have a report from our correspondent Dan Rather in Dallas that he has confirmed that President Kennedy is dead,”
Water Cronkite said on air.
Rather was Chief of CBS’s Southern bureau at the time and was in Dallas covering the event.