Before television, the newsreel preceded films showing at the cinema. There were even cinemas deicated to showing newsreels. Universal City Studios gifted Universal Newsreel to the American people, put the newsreels into the public domain, and gave film materials to the National Archives in 1976. Many of these are now available through the Internet Archive. For primary material baout everything from the depression to the moon landing, these are priceless (and very entertaining), though hardly unbiased in many respects.
http://www.archive.org/details/universal_newsreels