My earliest news memories start in late 1995. I would have just turned 8.
I remember them announcing the OJ Simpson verdict. I was in art class and the teacher was listening on the radio for some reason and went berserk when she heard him declared not guilty. “Not guilty?? What do you mean, not guilty? How could they think he didn’t do it??”
Shortly thereafter came the budget crisis. I remember a story about something called a “Nootgingrich” and Congress not being able to balance the budget. I had no understanding of this beyond the fact that “Nootgingrich” was apparently the reason my mother was home from work (she was a fed) and annoyed all the time. My brother, then 5, would walk around the house trying to perch random objects on his head and telling us he had “balanced the budget.”
Sadly, the Vietnam War…errr…Conflict that was aired nightly, sometimes live in the mid '60’s. However, this wasn’t a significant news event in my mind since it was always there.
June 6, 1968 - Robert Kennedy’s assassination sticks out in my mind. I remember seeing him on the ground and asking what happened and who he was. When my parent’s said John Kennedy’s brother, the significance hit me.
It may not be their first news memory, but my Mom said my sisters were sent home from school when JFK was assassinated and they came home crying.
I have to amend my answer to March 16, 1968. The My Lai massacre. I didn’t fully understand what happened, other than men, women and children were intentionally killed versus the usual X number of Vietcong and X number of U.S. soldier body counts.
We watched a LOT of TeeVee in our house and I’m surprised that I can’t conjure any news memories older than the Kennedy-Nixon debates on TV. 1960, age ten. I remember being in the room while my parents watched them.
The first Gemini launch. I remember the teacher explaining to us that we were for the first time going to put two people in space at the same time. The second memory would be the JFK assassination.
I remember seeing news reports about the oil and gas crisis in the 1970s There were always images of people waiting in long lines to buy fuel. Never saw it in real life, though (?)
I also remember that everyone was worried about inflation then. Seems strange now.
The first specific event that I think I really understood (sort of) was the Iranian hostage crisis.
The first news memory for me is probably the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial celebration. I was 7-1/2 years old at the time. I can’t think of any news event earlier than that that made any impression on me.
The next significant news memory was of events I heard about second-hand: the death of Pope John Paul I in September 1978 (only one month into his papacy), and the election of a new pope the next month who took the same name (Pope John Paul II).
Two more events that I heard about second-hand were the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in March 1979, followed by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in May 1980.
But to directly address the question posed in the OP, the first event that I clearly remember watching on the news myself (to the point that I still remember exactly where I was when I heard the news on TV) was the assassination of John Lennon in December 1980.
The next specific event that I remember seeing on the news was the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in March 1981.
(I vaguely remember hearing on the news something about the end of the Iranian Hostage crisis at the time that Reagan was inaugurated in January 1981, but didn’t really follow what was going on all that closely.)
P.S. It goes without saying that I clearly remember the defining news event of my childhood: the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in January 1986 when I was a senior in high school.
When I was a little kid, I remember oliver north on television all the time. It felt like he was on there forever (it was probably only a few months though).
I remember watching the first moon landing when I was just about a week shy of 8 yo.
I remember watching on TV when a local soldier that had been a POW in Viet Nam came home. I don’t remember the year. I THINK I was in 6th grade so it would have been '73.
This isn’t an actual news item but I do remember in 1968 when Nixon and Humphrey were running against each other for president. Humphrey was our Minnesota guy. So we’d chant (over & over) as we rode the bus to school:
Humphrey, Humphrey he’s our man
Nixon belongs in the garbage can.
I’m sure none of us knew anything about either’s politics, nor did we care. And I’m sure the bus driver was ready to drive over a cliff.
