How Media Contributed to Perception of War

Media and Vietnam War

In The Uncensored War (1989), David S. Halin divides the Vietnam War and the media coverage of it into three phases, 1961-65, 1965-68 and 1968-73. In the pre-1965 phase, before large numbers of American troops were in the country, the war received almost no TV or radio coverage, and a small number of journalists from the print media dominated coverage. Vietnam only became a television war or living room war with the big escalation in 1965-68, and the search-and-destroy strategy put in place by Gen. William Westmoreland. At the same time, antiwar and anti-draft protests also escalated in the U.S., although during these three years most of the media reported the government line on the war and were highly negative toward the antiwar movement. Only after the Tet Offensive in January 1968, which was followed by Lyndon Johnson's abrupt decision to refuse to run for president again, did the mass media and public opinion begin to turn decisively against the war. In the final phase after 1968, the official government line became that the U.S. was deescalating the war and was gradually withdrawing from Vietnam, and in general the mainstream media also reported this line.

In Reporting Vietnam (1998), William Hammond noted that the media attitude toward the Vietnam War changed greatly after the Tet Offensive in 1968, and that prior to that time they usually reported the official line on the war and the antiwar movement. Prior to that time, the dissent was very limited and generally reflected factions within military and civilian officialdom who doubted that it could be won. Southeast Asia had received very little media coverage at all in the 1940s and 1950s, up until the time when John F. Kennedy began to escalate the war in 1961 by sending in thousands of advisers to prop up the government of President Ngo Dinh Diem. Elite media such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Life and Newsweek were given special attention by officials in Washington and Saigon, "especially when they conflicted with the official line on an event" (Hammond x).

Diem had never been particularly popular in liberal circles in the U.S., and this was true long before the war became a major public issue at home. In November 1963, even the Kennedy administration gave a green light to a military coup against him, although even after this the situation in South Vietnam continued to deteriorate. For a time in 1962, though, even New York Times reporters like Daniel Halberstam believed the assurances of Gen. Paul Harkins, the head of Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) that the U.S. was winning the war against the Viet Cong with the use of helicopters and new counterinsurgency tactics. As the enemy adapted to these, however, and continued it success in taking over the countryside, Halberstam and the rest of the small corps of Amercan journalists in Saigon concluded that the war was lost. These reporters were not opposed to the war, however, and actually hoped to win it. They did not favor withdrawal at that time, but had decided that it could not be won under the leadership of Harkins and Diem.

Even at this early date, however, there was already a hostile and suspicious relationship between the journalists and military and embassy officials in Saigon. As Halberstam put it, "the journalists very quickly came to the conclusion that the top people at the embassy were either fools or liars or both," and this adversarial relationship intensified as the war escalated (Halin 5). Diem's press was completely controlled, as much as that in China or North Vietnam, and he "could not understand why the United States was unable to do the same" (Hammond 4). From time to time, he ordered certain American journalists expelled from the country because of their unfavorable coverage, particularly stories about the ineffectiveness of the Army of Vietnam (ARVN), corruption and drug dealing in high places, or the inability of the government to win over the peasants. In 1962-63, the Kennedy administration became highly critical of Halberstam and other print journalists, and tried to have them removed from Vietnam, even as it gradually turned against Diem as well.

During the phase of escalation and Americanization in 1965-68, the media generally continued to report the official military and administration line that Westmoreland's strategy was winning the war, up to the Tet Offensive in 1968. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson became enraged at CBS News for showing American soldiers burning down a Vietnamese village, and personally called the head of CBS News Frank Stanton early in the morning -- a call reported laced with great profanity (Halin 6). This type of story was not typical of the 1965-68 period, though, perhaps because of Johnson's success in selling the war and declaring that it would be won in two or three years. Only after the Tet Offensive, when Walter Cronkite appeared on CBS News and called the war a "bloody stalemate" did Johnson really believe that he had lost the support of Middle America (Halin 6). Nor did the media generally grant the antiwar and anti-draft movement very favorable coverage in 1965-68, but often reported government sources as attacking it for undermining the war effort, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and also being infiltrated by Communists. During this time, "reporters still began their inquiries with the World War II premise that draft resistance was outrageous" and that the domino theory and Cold War consensus were correct (Gitlin 101). Public opinion polls, including those conducted after the protests in Chicago in 1968 and the shootings at Kent State in 1970 that left four students dead, were generally hostile to the demonstrators rather than the authorities (Gitlin 244).