"The Assassination of President Kennedy" documentary that CNN aired over the 50th anniversary of the shooting of JFK is technically great, a combination of great editing and superior film and videotape restoration. The video clips of TV broadcasts from 50 years ago look just super. The Zapruder 8MM color film sparkles, looking better than I have ever seen it before. The closing credits show that this documentary was a co-production of companies that usually work on motion pictures, not TV documentaries. That must be why so much effort has been put into obtaining archival footage of TV news broadcasts shown in the aftermath of Kennedy's murder. American network TV stations nowadays would never put so much effort and expense into a documentary like this one. Unlike 20 years ago, when quality came first at network news operations, with magazine news shows like PrimeTime Live and the real Dateline NBC.
Almost nothing is perfect and this JFK documentary has one major flaw: the presence of Vincent Bugliosi, whose leaden comments defending the Warren Commission are completely out of place. Bugliosi's "expert" testimony consists of opinions from a boring former prosecutor. Instead of his talking head shots, I would have like more footage from regular folk who were in Dallas that day, comparable to the lady who told a reporter who asked that the CIA was behind the shooting. In other words, get a picture of the times from more eyewitnesses. One more eyewitness interview could have been James Tague, the car salesman who was watching the Kennedy motorcade pass by when he was struck slightly in the face by the ricochet of a bullet that missed Kennedy's vehicle and then bounced off the pavement at him.
Still and all, "The Sixties: The Assassination of President Kennedy" does a great job showing events in the aftermath of this murder of a president.