Memories of WFAA’s old ‘News 8 Etc.’ morning show are bittersweet

The Dallas Morning News fondly remembers Don Harris a local WFAA TV broadcaster but leaves out the most important parts of the story. Don Harris was the only major news reporter to interview Grace Walden Stevens in Memphis, crediting her story that the man in the rooming house who ran out with a rifle after the shooting of Dr. King was not James Earl Ray. His coverage of the urban riots that followed won him an Emmy award.

Harris was one of the victims of the Port Kaituma airport attack by programmed assassins who were part of the Jonestown intelligence operation. They shot particular people and made sure to finish the job, walking up to wounded, examining their faces and putting rounds into their heads. Others, they left alive. Jackie Speiers was one, who was an aide to Congressman Leo Ryan, who was also killed at the scene.

Gregory Robinson, a “fearless” journalist from the San Francisco Examiner, had photographed the same riots in Washington, D.C. When he was approached for copies of the films by Justice Department officials, he threw the negatives into the Potomac river.

These newsmen join the ranks of others killed for telling the truth about assassinations and political wrongdoing in America.

Memories of WFAA’s old ‘News 8 Etc.’ morning show are
bittersweet
Dallas Morning News
by Steve Blow
09 December 2012 12:03 AM

EXCERPTED FROM ORIGINAL ARTICLE, FOR FULL TEXT SEE:
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/steve-blow/20121209-steve-blow-memories-of-wfaas-old-news-8-etc.-morning-show-are-bittersweet.ece

Let’s step into the wayback machine today for the saga of a local TV show that was both a big hit and marked by tragedy.

News 8 Etc., it was called – a fun and freewheeling morning show that debuted in 1970. Two of its three hosts would die tragically. The third just missed a similar fate.

I heard fond, bittersweet memories of the show when I visited recently with some of the old-time TV news anchors now appearing each morning on The Texas Daily on KTXD-TV (Channel 47)…

WFAA wanted something to fit the hang-loose vibe of the era. It began by hiring an affable but serious newsman, Don Harris. A boyish young local reporter, Gene Thomas, was added. And then came the real wild card – a zany, song-and-dance gal named Suzie Humphreys…

But the fun didn’t last long. In October of 1971, working on a story for the show, Thomas rode in a jet-powered dragster at Dallas International Motor Speedway. It went out of control at 286 miles an hour and crashed, killing Thomas and two track workers…

Don Harris moved on from News 8 Etc. to become the evening news anchor for WFAA. Then he went to California as a correspondent for NBC News. He was killed in 1978 while reporting on the Jonestown cult in Guyana…

Humphreys stayed as new hosts came and went, but her heart wasn’t in it. “I was there almost five years and they fired me,” she said. “And I deserved to be fired.”…