Media Coverage of Vietnam War

Media: Power and Influence on Public Perception of the Vietnam War
The power of the media has long been understood, and part of that power is in shaping popular opinion. The media can show emotionally poignant images, give a platform to expert authorities and together these two factors can influence the minds and hearts of people. This was something that was particularly true during the era of the Vietnam War, sometimes referred to as America’s first “television war” (Hillesheim, 2017). In 1965, nearly every household in America owned a television (90%) and depended on this television to get the bulk of their news (Hillesheim, 2017). Television was a new technology—used for broadcasting the news and information and was not at this time privy to censorship or comparable laws of media. This meant that the average American had unparalleled access to the Vietnam War. In some ways, this freedom of access and information was a once in a lifetime event, and certainly something that would not occur in this day and age. Seeing uncensored images and footage of the atrocities of war is a blessing and a curse: it’s a blessing to receive such a candor of information, of what is actually going on overseas, but it will almost inevitably sour the human heart, causing the average person to lose sight of the bigger picture of being at war. This paper will discuss how the media had an undeniable influence on the opinion of Americans’ in the Vietnam War and how it impacted most Americans with the desire of wanting to pull out of the war or to be unable to see the benefit of our participation.
It’s important to bear in mind that the media’s influence and interest in Vietnam was gradual at first: when the war first started there were few reports on small country, with a few reports here and there about the growth of communism within the nation (Ronn, 2014). This changed at the end of 1960 when many civilians died in an attack waged against President Diem. This event is precisely what caused more reporters to be sent there. For many Americans, this coup, and all the civilian lives it took, has a humanizing impact on their viewpoint of the war. From this point on, “the war started to come to many American living rooms and usually with bad news. On the media, the battle of Ap Bac was described as a debacle of the South Vietnamese Army. The Buddhist Crisis highlighted by the famous picture of Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation portrayed Diem’s regime as a brutal and dictatorial regime” (Ronn, 2014). Scholars have argued that the more the details of the war were broadcast to homes all over the nation, the lower public support fell. Other scholars argued that support for a war decreases over time as a fact of collective human behavior and has nothing in particular to do with the Vietnam War.
It’s also important to note that during the years of the war, television was becoming a more trusted source of news: Roper surveys administered at the time as Americans who they would trust if they ever received conflicting accounts of a particular story. 48 percent of the people surveyed said television while only 21 percent said newspapers (McLaughlin). These results aren’t surprising for the era: at this point in time Americans were connecting nightly with news anchors who were able to make a human connection over the television set, appearing in people’s homes like trusted friends.
“The visual element of television allows viewers to feel as if they are part of the action. When news programs aired images of battles and death, Americans at home felt as if they too were in the jungles of Vietnam. Additionally, intense visuals helped explain the complex nature of war to Americans who could not understand the military's technical language” (McLaughlin). Hence the media was able to give Americans a heightened sense of immediacy with the Vietnam War and Americans put their total trust in these anchors, with Walter Cronkite quickly being dubbed the most trusted man in America (McLaughlin). This high level of trust set the stage for these personalities to have influence on how many citizens perceived the war. Many argue that this created a dependence of Americans on television for images, perspectives and true accounts of the realities of the war. In reality, they were watching very carefully edited, half-hour versions with very real human bias of a incredibly intricate war.
Another element which makes this situation even more complex and biased is that its important to remember that television is an industry just like any other: it is motivated by profits before it is motivated by public service. The professionals running the nightly news want to keep their jobs; they want high ratings; they want promotions. Hence, they all have their own inner stimuli that impact how they shape the stories told on the nightly news. Producers and reporters have long tried to make the news more entertaining by telling stories that have elements of heroism, excitement or conflict. Some scholars have argued that the television news didn’t cover Vietnam all that extensively until the amount of American troops was elevated to 175,000 in the summer of 1965, and when hence the war was considered to be more “dramatic” (Hallin, 1986). “Combat, interviews with American soldiers, and helicopter scenes all provided the television news industry with the drama that it required. The networks set up permanent bureaus in Saigon and sent hundred of correspondents there throughout the war” (Mclaughlin). Initially, the media was able to shape a positive opinion of the war in Americans at large because they presented the war in overly simplistic ways that made the American soldier look positive. Soldiers were portrayed as “good guys shooting reds”; this was a familiar narrative of the nice American military man fighting against communism (McLaughlin). During this time period, American soldiers were relied upon as sources for information and they were almost always portrayed heroically. The slant that these stories took was almost always anti-communism, and if they were going to vilify anyone, they vilified the war, not the soldiers. Hence during this time, it was no surprise that American opinion of the war was still generally positive: it was an unfortunate situation, but it had to be done—a necessary evil.
The general turning point of this coverage occurred during the autumn of 1967. At this time, the nightly audience of the news was huge and around 50 million people watched the television news nightly (Bonier et al., 1984). The lack of censorship of news coverage was part of what drew such a big audience, and also what gathered such firm support of the war—but it also ended up being what caused American support to war and deteriorate. Journalists overseas covered the war intrepidly and began to show two elements to the public that chipped away at their support: graphic combat and disturbed soldiers.
The Tet Offensive
The Tet offensive was one of the most concrete moments in history that demonstrated the damage that can occur when the media reports inaccuracies, and is allowed to influence the public in the name of ratings (Just & Bates, 2000). If one views the nightly news as show, by 1968 it was time to shake up and change up the coverage of the Vietnam war, in order to reengage perhaps bored viewers. Hence, news stations all over the United States portrayed the Tet offensive as a North Vietnam victory, when actually it was a U.S. victory (Just & Bates, 2000). North Vietnam factions suffered tremendous casualties, losing a large amount of their manpower. “Television, however, portrayed the attack as a brutal defeat for the U.S; the media, not the military, confirmed the growing perception that the U.S was unable to win the war” (McLaughlin). No one wants to support the losing side: thus, to portray the Vietnam war as an endeavor which is unwinnable instantly transforms the entire American presence overseas as dangerous, wanton, a waste of young lives, military technology and money. The Tet offensive was definitively soured many Americans against the war, and many news stations continued to air their unique biases which their trusting audiences readily adopted. Consider the following statement made by Walter Cronkite: 'To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.to say that we are mired in a bloody stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory conclusion" (Hallin, 1986, 170). The lucidity of hindsight really helps to demonstrate just how ludicrous a statement that was: Cronkite wasn’t a military expert or a former war general. He really was not qualified to say such a thing, and his remarks only helped to bias a trusting public.

Youth in Protest
The younger American generation had an enormous voice and platform during this time and this protest movement is one of the most memorable and perhaps influential in all of American history. Since the television coverage of the war became so negative and deeply humanized American presence overseas, it is no surprise that the younger generation was so deeply affected. Experts and participants who were a part of this movement refer to it as one of the first mass movements against a war in the nation and one of the great moral crusades of human history (Zimmerman, 2017). The first wave of protests began in 1964 and 1965 and consisted of both left-wing activists and college students (many of whom were familiar with the southern civil rights movement) (Zimmerman, 2017). Once American presence in Vietnam increased in the mid 1960s, leaders of the movement drew others into action, sought to normalize opposition—given that historically Americans are loyalists, and don’t like to oppose their own nation during times of war (Zimmerman, 2017). As the war escalated, so did the protest movement. The protests became bigger and more numerous: “Establishment voices, including Senator Robert Kennedy and the influential columnist Walter Lippmann, spoke out against the war. Senator J. William Fulbright held televised hearings that brought antiwar views directly into American homes. Throughout 1966 and 1967, leaders from politics, science, medicine, academia, entertainment, the press and even business announced their opposition to the war” (Zimmerman, 2017). The visibility of such high profile celebrities and such influential people opposing the war, truly had a tremendous impact on public opinion—particularly when one considers that this was happening in conjunction with consistently negative nightly news coverage on the war. At one point during this era, half a million people demonstrated against the war in the spring of 1967 in New York, which was the largest type of gathering in history at that time (Zimmerman, 2017).
It’s important to bear in mind that this generation of youth, the people who were born after World War Two, came from a generation of enormous privilege: during this era of history, the economy was booming, the nation was safe and theirs was a generation that really didn’t face any extreme hardships. Hence, for them seeing the atrocities committed against innocent Vietnamese citizens was unbearable. Young and old Americans had expected some casualties from the war, but the coverage of innocent victims—women, children and families, caused an enormous amount of disgust to grow. Hence the protest movement gathered full steam ahead.

The Pentagon Leaks
Perhaps the most damning scandal to occur domestically at this time was the Pentagon leaks. Top military analyst Daniel Ellsberg had become disillusioned with the United States involvement in the war. As the war dragged on, gathering more and more young American soldiers while the draft raged in America, Ellsberg made the decision that very classified Department of Defense study about military involvement in Vietnam should be made public, so he copied it and leaked it to the New York Times, who ultimately published these papers, giving context to some of the most damning secrets and lies made by the United States government (Ellsberg, 2003). The result of this leak was clear: more opposition to the war intensified. Public outcry against the war and government was staunch and pervasive throughout the country.

My Lai
The My Lai incident was probably one of the most notorious events in conjunction with the Vietnam War, and one of the most decisive incidents to infuriate the American public against the war, against U.S. involvement and to active domestic citizens’ sense of repulsion and fury. Quite simply, the My Lai incident involved the murder of hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese men, women, children, and elderly. “At one point, a young second lieutenant named William L. Calley supervised the shooting of dozens of villagers who were rounded up, forced to stand on the edge of a ditch and then machine-gunned. It was, a friend and fellow GI who had been there later told me, ‘a Nazi kind of thing’” (Ridenhour, 1993).
Helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, who ultimately had to threaten the American soldiers responsible for the massacre, eventually stopped the My Lai incident. The army attempted to cover up the My Lai incident, but it was ultimately leaked to the news, and the American public found out what happened at My Lai twenty months after the mass murder occurred. The reaction of the American public was pure outrage, outrage and fury that extended not only to U.S. involvement in the war, but the entire military and government system. The press had a duty to report the My Lai incident, and this was perhaps one of the atrocities present within the enormously long war, that didn’t need the bias of anchormen and women to spark wrath against U.S. involvement in the war.

Conclusion
The Vietnam War was one of the most complex and enduring wars in the history of the United States. Public reaction to the war was a process and evolved as the war evolved. When the first troops were sent overseas, no one in America could have guessed that U.S. involvement would have spanned two decades. The adoption of television in the United States and the presence of trusted nightly news anchors had a deep impact on U.S. perceptions of the war. Censorship didn’t exist and households all over the country suddenly had the atrocities of war right there in their living rooms. There was so much to process for the average American. As U.S. involvement in the war changed, so did American perceptions of the war. Anchormen like Walter Cronkite easily gained the trust of so many people, and exerted his influence on their perceptions of the war. Furthermore, the anti-war movement gained momentum, and became bigger and more influential with each passing year. Finally, events like the devastation at My Lai solidified public repulsion towards the war and rampant mistrust of government.


















References

Bonier, David E. Steven M. Champlain and Timothy S. Kolly, The Vietnam Veteran: A History of Neglect. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1984.
Ellsberg, D. (2003). Secrets: A memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. Penguin.
Hallin, Daniel C., The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam. Los Angles: California University of California Press, 1986.
Hillesheim, J. (2017, August 7). How the Media Shapes Public Opinion of War. Retrieved from https://www.rewire.org/pbs/vietnam-war-media-shapes-public- opinion/
History.com. (2011). Pentagon Papers - Vietnam War - HISTORY.com. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/pentagon-papers
Just, W., & Bates, M. J. (2000). Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism, 1959-1975. Library of America.
McLaughlin, E. (n.d.). The Media and the Vietnam War. Retrieved from https://www.warbirdforum.com/media.htm
Ridenhour, R. (2013, November 2). Perspective on My Lai : 'It Was a Nazi Kind of Thing' : America still has not come to terms with the implications of this slaughter of unarmed and unresisting civilians during the Vietnam War. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/1993-03-16/local/me-363_1_vietnam-war
Ronn, A. (2014, March 2). Media Role in The Vietnam War - The Vietnam War. Retrieved from https://thevietnamwar.info/media-role-vietnam-war/
Wiener, J. (2018, March 16). A forgotten hero stopped the My Lai massacre 50 years ago today. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wiener-my-lai-hugh-thompson-20180316-story.html
Zimmerman, B. (2017, October 24). Opinion | The Four Stages of the Antiwar Movement. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/opinion/vietnam-antiwar-movement.html