This timeline is part of an ongoing project and will be updated.
1942
Voice Of America (VOA) is formed. This international shortwave radio station is a way for other countries to find out about American news and culture. It is also a form of propaganda for democracy forces against communism during WWII.
© Voice of America
1944
NBC News radio broadcast of D-Day.
© NBC News
1948
NBC television teams up with Life Magazine to provide election night coverage of Harry S. Truman’s victory over Thomas Dewey.
© NBC News
1951
CBS’s Edward R. Murrows launches one of the first TV journalism programs, See It Now, which helps to stop the communist “witch hunts” led by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
© CBS
1960
The Kennedy-Nixon debate is the first televised debate between two presidential candidates produced by CBS and reaches 70 million viewers. (In 1956, two women were featured in the very first presidential debate, though neither was a candidate. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for the Democrats and for the Republicans, the senior senator from Maine, Margaret Chase Smith held a widely seen debate.
This content is brought to you as part of a PBS NewsHour project to make all presidential and vice presidential debates available to watch online.
1963
In one of his most famous broadcasts, Walter Cronkite addresses viewers on CBS announcing the assassination of President Kennedy, just moments after the shooting in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. CBS was the first to break the news over television at 12:40 p.m. CST/1:40 p.m. EST, just 10 minutes after JFK was shot. Walter Cronkite filed an audio-only report; live video of Cronkite was impossible at that time, as no camera in the CBS newsroom was active and ready.
© CBS
1968
60 Minutes debuts on CBS hosted by Mike Wallace and Harry Reasoner. It becomes the most popular and profitable news program in the history of American television.
© CBS