If you are going to tell the story of television’s impact on America, you are going to be talking about Sander Vanocur every step of the way.
If you’re measuring how TV brought the story of civil rights into the living rooms of millions — and in those days, there was only one TV and it was in the living room — you will see Vanocur sitting down with Martin Luther King Jr. to talk about the strategy and tactics of the movement.
If you want to look at the medium’s impact on politics, you’ll find Vanocur questioning John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon at the very first televised presidential debate in 1960, and you will see him again a generation later in1992, questioning Clinton, Bush, and Ross Perot.