The Effect Of Mass Media On The Vietnam War

Write an essay that offers a critical examination of the concept of the ‘guilty media’ thesis in respect of any war of your choice

During the Vietnam War, Americans were greatly influenced by the extensive media coverage of the war. Before the 1960’s and the intensification of the war, public news coverage of military action was constrained heavily by the government and was directed by Government policy. The Vietnam War uniquely altered the perception of war in the eyes of American citizens by bringing the war into their homes. The Vietnam War was the first U.S uncensored war resulting in the release of graphic images and unaltered accounts of horrific events that helped to change public opinion of the war like nothing it had ever been. This depiction by the media led to a separation between the United States government and the press; much of what was reported flouted

Whilst, towards the beginning of the war, the media being released was largely in support of the war efforts, later years of the conflict exhibited a more negative press, where more negative portrayals of troops were being sent home and featured on the news. Bias of the media played a large part in moulding public opinion of the conflict going on in Vietnam, exemplified in media reports of the Tet Offensive which, “was actually a U.S victory because the North suffered enormous casualties. Television, however, portrayed the attack as a brutal defeat for the U.S” (McLaughlin 2015, The Turning Point, para. 2). As hypothesised by David Halberstam, Vietnam was, “the first time in American history a war had been declared over by an anchor man,” (Hallin n.d., para. 9) when Walter Cronkite, “[expressed] his view that the war was unwinnable, and that the United States would have to find a way out.” (Hallin n.d., para. 9) Many speculations about the media defining public opinion about the war are made largely due to the fact that civilian opinion changed as media reports began to become more negative, which then lead to many anti-war protests and the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. Due to the negative effects the lack of censorship had on the public during Vietnam, the government recognised the power of the media and changed censorship practices for following

During this time period, the use of television boomed, and for the first time was depended on and trusted significantly more than newspapers. “[Even though] the coverage of the war was significant, a relatively small portion of the coverage was actually combat footage (Anderson). Although producers captured thousands of hours worth of combat footage, they could not push out all of the coverage they captured, “The purpose being not to avoid showing the ugly side of war, but rather to avoid offending families of war victims" (Hallin). The media did not intentionally try to turn america against the war, to the contrary the media saw the war necessary to national security. However, as the war continued on in vietnam and watched daily in living rooms across the country, both the american soldiers and the public became disillusioned as they did not see an end to the war

By 1968, more than half of the American people relied on television as their principal source of news. What they saw informed, engrossed, and unsettled them. CBS Evening News anchor Harry Reasoner referred to it as “horrors and failures.” The Vietnam War dominated the network newscast as it never had before. Suddenly the war was everywhere. The impact on the American public would indeed be great. It set off a critical reaction to the war within the American media and gave greater credence to arguments against the war that a vocal protest movement had been voicing for some time. The media coverage of the Tet Offensive had a great influence on the eventual outcome of the fighting and its aftermath. Clarence Wyatt, author of Paper

In the 1960s, the low-intensity conflict in Indochina that had progressed since the end of the Second World War became a war. Weather a conflict is of smaller importance or is a full blown war is not only down to government

The investigation assesses the media coverage of the Tet Offensive and its impact on American policy concerning the Vietnam War from 1968 until 1969. The investigation evaluates the contrast between media broadcasts and government reports of the war, the effect of the media on the American public, and the effect of American public opinion on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s course of action. Two of the sources, Vietnam and America: A Documented History by Marvin E. Gettleman, Jane Franklin, Marilyn Young, and H. Bruce Franklin, and The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam by Daniel C. Hallin are examined.

“Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room.” Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher of communication theory, told the Montreal Gazette in 1975. Vietnam is often referred to as the television war and it’s been widely said that the outcome of the war was decided not on the battle field but on the television screen. Today I will be exploring the extent to which media reporting on the Tet Offensive influenced US crucial decision making in 1968. The aspects that I will be investigating are; the media coverage of the war and it’s influence on public opinion as well as how the result of these two aspects impacted on how the government formed their decisions.

The Vietnam war is also known as the Second Indochina War. Vietnam is a small country in Southeast Asia. The Vietnam War was the longest war in which the United States took part. Vietnam was separated into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was communist, and they wanted to end U.S support of South Vietnam. North Vietnam wanted to combine the two parts into the country. The United States and South Vietnamese army tried to stop from this happening. The main part of the war was a struggle between the South Vietnamese army and communist trained Viet Cong. The U.S entered North Vietnam and the United States did most of the fighting. The Vietnam War was very unpopular in the United States. Many people demonstrated their anger with the war. Unfortunately and unfairly, the people who were treated badly when they returned to the United States were the soldiers who risked their lives to do fighting.

war the enemy would be in uniform and it was clear who to kill who not

Vietnam was a country divided into two by communism in the North and capitalism in the South. The Vietnam War, fought between the years 1959 and 1975, was, in essence, a struggle by nationalists in the north to unify the nation under a communist government. This was a long standing conflict between the two sides that had been occurring for years. It wasn’t until 1959 when the USA, stepped in, on the side of southern Vietnamese, to stop the spread of communism. It was a war that did not capture the hearts and minds of the American people as it was viewed as a war that the US army couldn’t win and so the government lost the peoples support for the war. This ultimately led to the withdrawal of the US army from Vietnam. Some people, like

As one who witnessed the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s, there was a palpable paradigm shift in both print and broadcast news, as the ability for live coverage increased and the news outlets viciously competed for ratings. Halbrooks (2016) cited the television coverage of Kennedy’s assassination, Cronkite shifting public opinion on the Vietnam War, and in 1974, Woodward & Bernstein taking down the presidency of Nixon as evidence of media shaping public

In times of War, the media plays a crucial role both in reporting, monitoring and giving updates. During the Vietnam War of 1955-1975, the American press played crucial roles of reporting until it ended up shifting its tone under the influence of occurrence of some events like the Tet Offensive, the My Lai Massacre, the bombing of Cambodia and leaking of Pentagon papers resulting into lack of trust in the press (Knightly 1975). From the beginning of the war up to present times there have been undying debates over the role of media in the war. The have been various criticisms over the American News Media’s actions and influences on the outcome of the war. The debate is embedded on the particular political assumptions perceived across the

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Thousands of our nation's men and women were fighting for their country, yet the media limited the amount of information that they chose to pass on to the public. Each day the media is faced with the choice of making decisions of what news to pass on, when that news could make a significant difference in someone's life, or in the fate of our nation.