The Medias Role in Vietnam - Research Paper Example

The Media’s Role in Vietnam America’s military involvement in Vietnam ended nearly 40 years ago but this dark period in history remains a benchmark by which we measure other conflicts, most recently Iraq and Afghanistan. The general consensus it that Vietnam was a debacle, an unnecessary war that cost more than 56,000 young people their lives and left many more injured both physically and mentally. Where did the consensus come from? Most people with this viewpoint weren’t there. The Pentagon seldom put a negative spin on the conflict and the protesters were in college, not fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The media was allowed more unfiltered access to this war than any previous and was extremely instrumental in shaping opinion back home. The reporting during the first part of the conflict essentially mimicked the government’s “domino theory” justification, that the U.S. was preventing the spread of communism. However, events during the later part of the war such as My Lai and the Tet Offensive turned the media and therefore public opinion against American involvement. The close-knit relationship between the media and military turned adversarial which affected public opinion and ultimately brought an end to the war. The debate continues whether or not the reporting was unbiased and accurate, if the folks back home knew the real story and if history has recorded the war according to fact or an agenda driven fiction. Media accounts of war consisted mainly of photographs during the First World War. The public saw only what passed the Press Bureau’s censorship guidelines however, a move to ensure public opinion stayed positive. Moving pictures in the form of newsreels shown prior to movies depicted America’s involvement in the best possible light. The people back home saw their soldiers bravely gaining ground against the fascist and Japanese menaces that threatened to take over the world and end the American way of life. In these days before television, these accounts helped theater goers to feel a sense of pride and security. Support for the war was practically unanimous. Everyone wanted to pitch-in for the war effort. The stories coming out of Vietnam were similar at least at first. The general public bought into the idea of America’s fighting men fighting and dying to preserve freedom and democracy in another foreign land. “This attitude stemmed from the journalistic style that had been used in the preceding American wars of the twentieth century and also from sheer patriotic support for the United States” (Hallin, 1986, p. 9). Media reports during Vietnam were different than previous wars due to the new technology of television which had not played a role in previous wars. Americans had a high level of trust for television news which extended to editorial opinions expressed by newscasters such as Huntley/Brinkley and Walter Cronkite who, prior to 1967, delivered the message without personal comment. Beginning in the early part of that year print journalist, reporters and news anchors began to freely express their frustrations. “CBS News correspondent Dan Rather was quoted as referring to Vietnam as ‘this dirty little war’ and from April through to the end of 1967, television‘s image of the war became increasingly contradictory” (Hallin, 1986, p. 133). Cronkite, a father-figure type, was likely more wifely trusted than other news anchors or the government regardless of a person’s political persuasion. His reports during the early years of the war were supportive but when that changed, America’s opinion of the war changed too which was worrisome to the politicians who wanted to remain in the conflict. President Johnson said, “if I‘ve lost Cronkite, I‘ve lost Middle America” (Moise, 2005, pp. 111-112). Critics of the media’s role in swaying public opinion against the nation’s involvement in Vietnam argue that Americans were not given the whole story in proper context. The public did not fully appreciate the importance of the country’s commitment, both to back the government of South Vietnam and to prevent the spread of communism. The media failed to convey this important message and instead encouraged feelings of despair and discontent leading to a negative opinion and complete disrespect for the imperative war effort. The media portrayed the men fighting against the communist threat as mostly draftees who were effectively kidnapped by war mongers in Washington D.C. to sacrifice themselves in a senseless, brutal and illegal war. Due to misrepresentation by the media, history records that withdrawing the troops did not have an impact on the failure or success in Vietnam, but that America was beaten by a country about the size of New Jersey well before 1973 and the total withdrawal should have occurred many years sooner. The public’s insistence that the war end prematurely demonstrates that they did not perceive the situation in Southeast Asia as a threat to freedom or that it would ever be. This mass appeal for an exit strategy did not occur during World War I or II. In fact American troops remain in Germany and Japan even today. A valid case can be made that the U.S. withdrew prematurely therefore suffering a humiliating defeat that haunts the country to this day. The widely perceived loss perpetrated by the press has damaged America’s reputation globally and casts eternal doubts on its military effectiveness. “Responsible for the first draft of history, the press is charged with immense power that must not be taken lightly meaning that the performance of the press should be often evaluated, critiqued and corrected” (Tibbitts, 2008). The media’s failure to report all aspects of the conflict to the public during the Vietnam Era clearly shows its inadequacy which is unacceptable for the so-called “fourth branch of government.” The media is a powerful institution that affects public opinion and it should accept this great responsibility with more seriousness of purpose. Americans over-reacted to the many times biased information offered with no way of knowing if the reports were valid. “Misused anonymous sources, unchecked information, sensationalized broadcasts, and uncorrected mistakes all led to a uniformed public” (Tibbitts, 2008). Those who would blame the media for the calamity that was Vietnam are guilty of ‘shooting the messenger’ as the saying goes. The media got it right, finally, but only following years of a senseless slaughter that took the lives of innocent kids who were blinded by a contrived call to arms and an appeal to patriotism, a strong influence that permeated the American psyche following WWII. The March 1968 My Lai massacre refers to an infamous incident where American soldiers systematically executed hundreds of indigenous civilians is often cited as evidence of media sensationalism. The mainstream media knew of this horrific incident but would not report on it. Evidence of the massacre was given to prominent media outlets by GI Ron Ridenhour among others. Ridenhour wrote to 30 congressmen and Pentagon officials detailing the incident when he came home but it wasn’t until reporter Seymour Hersh and a minor publication, the Dispatch News Service, wrote the story that it was distributed to larger news agencies and the truth was finally known. The “mainstream media,” military and government officials did their best to hide it from the public. Other similar civilian massacres such as Thanh Phong may have been avoided had the media done its job instead of being complicit with a military cover-up. During the nearly two year media suppression of the My Lai story, a Navy Seal team which included future U.S. Senator and Governor of Nebraska Bob Kerry, then an inexperienced lieutenant, entered a “free-fire” zone and mistakenly murdered several civilians including elderly men, women and children. “Standard operating procedure was to dispose of the people we made contact with,” Kerry said in a 1998 interview. “I was expecting to find Vietcong soldiers with weapons, dead. Instead I found women and children” (Vistica, 2001). Might those Seals have been authorized to use such aggressive tactics had the media been aggressively reporting the events of the war and the My Lai story had come out earlier? Senator Bob Kerrey http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2006/06/jim_pinkerton_b/ The lie of the media’s participation was that it brought the realities of war into everyone’s living room. University of California at San Diego Daniel Hallin’s extensive study of the media’s role in Vietnam determined that the war’s events, particularly the one seen in the nation’s living rooms, were generally the sanitized version due to the media’s friendly relationship with the military and government. Filming and photographing U.S. dead soldiers was rarely done because television network policies prohibited showing anything that might be considered insensitive to the families of soldiers. Showing innocent Vietnamese casualties didn’t happen. Very little emotion provoking stories or images reached the public. It wasn’t the media that swayed American sentiment; it was Americans fueled by the outrage of soldiers returning home from Vietnam. The media followed the opposition opinion and became more skeptical of the war, not the other way around. (Hallin, 1986) The Boston Globe completed a survey of the top 39 U.S. daily newspapers in February 1968 and found none of them supported withdrawal although this was the clear sentiment of millions of people nationally. Americans didn’t change their minds or were turned against the war from watching the evening news or reading from a periodical but by means of speaking with returning soldiers and locating alternative types of media such as the Dispatch News Service. Beginning in 1965 teach-ins began popping up at colleges throughout the country. The Thanh Phong incident illustrates one aspect of the media’s cozy relationship with the military, body counts. U.S. casualty numbers were consistently deflated while Viet Cong were routinely inflated. As leader of his Seal team, Kerrey received the Bronze Star for Thanh Phong because, officially, the unit killed 21, a number that was padded by double according to several accounts and these people were not the enemy in the first place. (Cohen, 2001) Even he laziest of journalists would have known the Viet Cong body count was exaggerated, in part by counting civilians. Still, the media obediently conveyed the numbers given by military officials without question year after year. Cronkite offered an unexpected commentary in 1968 referring to the war as a “stalemate.” “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us. And with each escalation the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.” (Turner, 1985, p. 231). At this time a half-million U.S. troops were in Vietnam, the war’s bloodiest year. According to Hallin’s study television coverage prior to 1968 was “strongly supportive” of the war with almost no exceptions. As for the country being persuaded to be against the war by the media, Hallin concluded: “Television was more a follower than a leader of public opinion.” (Cohen, 2001) The media slowed its cheerleading of the war effort in 1968 but did not focus its attention to the morality of the war but rather its win-ability. The “Tet” offensive was a military victory for the U.S. but a public relations loss back home. The shocking events beginning January of 1968 when North Vietnamese forces surprise attacked many locations in the South had a considerable impact on the psyche of the American public. Tet was a major tipping point in America’s overall the perception of war. Deflated body count or not, the number of U.S. deaths in addition to the size and scope of the clandestine operation resonated loudly with a public growing increasingly fatigued of the mounting casualties in a place located halfway around the world few had heard of until troops were deployed there. President Johnson told General Westmoreland shortly after Tet, that trying to escalate the America’s involvement was “politically unfeasible.” (Logevall, 1999) CBS reporter Mike Wallace said “the Tet offensive had demolished the myth that allied strength controlled South Vietnam.” The New York Times chastised the military by writing of Tet “These are not the deeds of an enemy whose fighting efficiency has ‘progressively declined’ and whose morale is ‘sinking fast,’ as United States military officials put it in November” (Holm, 2002). The media was reflecting rather than shaping public opinion. The Hamburger Hill incident symbolized U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In May 1969 American ground forces were ordered not to give up a non-strategic area despite repeated assaults by the determined North Vietnamese and hundreds of GI’s killed and wounded. Soon after the hill was taken by the Americans it was simply abandoned back to the enemy without a fight. The outrage following this battle was expressed by the press, citizens and politicians. Senator Ted Kennedy publically condemned the battle by saying it was “senseless and irresponsible” on the Senate floor. (Moise, 2005, p. 167). Anti-war sentiment was growing among members of congress as reports of low troop morale were increasing. The government was split in its support for the war and the troops just wanted to come home. The public felt it was its duty to help bring the war to an end in any way it could to so many demonstrated their disapproval by demonstrating against it. The “Kim Phuc” photo http://blindflaneur.com/2008/06/30/after-napalm-the-long-road-to-forgiveness/ By 1972 only the most hawkish within the government or among the public was for keeping troops in Vietnam. The June 1972 photo of Kim Phuc, a nine year-old Vietnamese girl acted to further strengthen the case for withdrawal. The photo showed taken in a village outside of Saigon showed the girl and other children running from a misplaced napalm bomb. The chemical napalm burns flesh on contact. According to Associated Press bureau Chief George Esper, who stayed in Saigon until the war’s end, “This picture showed the effects of war, and how wrong and destructive it was. People looked at it and said; this war has got to end” (Chong, 2000, p. 8). Americans generally agreed with the justifications given for sending troops to Vietnam at least during the early years of the war but events gradually turned public opinion against military involvement. The media’s role was to be complicit with the military narrative, allow censorship and to ignore atrocities, a circumstance that didn’t change until the American people decided en masse to oppose the war. The media did not sympathize with the protest movement either until the Kent State massacre of 1970 when four students were murdered by the National Guard during a peaceful protest. Public opinion influenced the media’s outlook on the war and finally the governments. Works Cited Chong, D. The girl in the picture. Toronto: Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2000. Print. Cohen, Jeff. The myth of the medias role in Vietnam. Fair and Accuracy in Reporting, May 6, 2001. Print. Hallin, D. The uncensored war. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Print. Holm, Jason D. “Get over it! Repairing the militarys adversarial relationship with the press.” Military Review. v. 82 n. 1, January 2002. Print. Logevall, Fredrick.  Choosing war: the lost chance for peace and the escalation of the war in Vietnam. Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 1999. Print. Moise, E. THE A TO Z OF THE VIETNAM WAR. Maryland: Scarecrow Press Ltd, 2005. Print. Tibbitts, Emily. The War in Vietnam and the Media’s Role American Veterans Center, 2008. Web. March 19, 2012 Turner, K. J. Lyndon Johnson’s dual war: Vietnam and the press. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Ltd, 1985. Print. Vistica, Gregory L. “One awful night in Thanh Phong.” New York Times Magazine. April 25, 2001. Print. Read More