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Talked to a retired journalist about the JFK assassination footage
Had coffee with a guy named Frank who worked for AP back in the 60s. He told me the famous Zapruder film was so poorly preserved by the time it hit newsrooms that most people saw a version that had frames spliced out accidentally. Made me wonder how many other historical hoaxes just come from bad handling instead of bad actors. Anyone else run into old media folks with stories that change how you see a famous video?
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holly7094mo ago
My uncle used to work in the film archives for a local TV station and he told me they'd literally splice reels together with scotch tape back in the day. One time they accidentally played a commercial for a vacuum cleaner backwards and people called in convinced it was a subliminal message from the government. That whole era of media handling was basically a bunch of overworked guys chain smoking in a dark room and hoping the film didn't catch fire. Makes you wonder how much of history is just some tired dude dropping a reel on the floor and shrugging.
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brooket434mo ago
1328 calls about that vacuum cleaner ad is basically the whole information age in a nutshell - we're all just stumbling through life making connections that aren't there while the people in charge are running on coffee and luck.
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