US Propaganda In The Vietnam 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 january, 1968 the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam war was launched. The Tet Offensive was a carefully planned military campaign composed of surprise attacks on the republic of Vietnam by the communist parties of North and South Vietnam during the vietnamese holiday, Tet. The Tet offensive, militarily was a massive defeat for the communist parties of Vietnam, however it led to mass disillusionment within the U.S., diminishing public support for the war, inevitably forcing a withdrawal of U.S. troops, therefore it was also a political triumph for the communist. Thus the question of this investigation is therefore: to what extent did the Tet Offensive affect America’s societal opinion on the involvement of the Vietnam war?

I will begin by giving a brief explanation of how the U.S. got involved in the Vietnam War, along with some of the motives that sparked the conflict. In order to understand the full picture of the Vietnam war, I believe that it is important to know why America was there in the first place. Next, I will be discussing the events of the Tet Offensive and the battles that followed. The massive attack launched against U.S. troops during the Tet Offensive caused a shift in the war that had many negative outcomes for America. Following the events of the Tet Offensive, I will discuss the media’s role in the conflict. The Vietnam War was the first American war to be broadcasted for all to see. This brings me to my next, and final point, the public’s opinion. The availability of combat footage led to the spark of many antiwar movements. Many antiwar protests took place at universities, such as the University of South Carolina, and in the nation’s capital. I hope that by sharing my point of view on the subject, I will help to connect the dots between the Tet Offensive, carried out by the North Vietnamese, and America’s less than victorious withdrawal from the Vietnam

Up until this point, Americans still foolishly believed in the government, the soldiers and in the presidential speeches. Along with the Tet Offensive, another event that changed the minds of Americans was the invasion of the U.S Embassy in Saigon, which later became known as the US Embassy: Fall of Saigon. The Fall of Saigon was also an invasion by the North Vietnamese on South Vietnam, and consequentially, the South fell to the North, effectively, ending the Vietnam War. But more importantly, this tragedy ended the trust of Americans in their government and in their political leaders. These images of the Tet Offensive and the invasion of the U.S Embassy were burned into the memories of Americans and they understood that the war was going to drag on, with it 's bloody, massive murders. And up until that point, the majority of the U.S population foolishly believed that we were winning the war. In a 1968 newscast with famous anchorman, Walter Cronkite, often referred to as “America 's most trusted man”, he states, “For it seems now more certain than ever, that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. 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”(Walter Cronkite Broadcast). After Cronkite made this commentary acknowledging that the Vietnam War was a hopeless one that we could not win, a massive uproar began in the United States. It is obvious that television coverage

Public opinion an invisible sledgehammer that can dismantled and shake any politician foundation. Public opinion that played a decisive role in the United States’ commitment to the conflict in the Vietnam War. If it can sway our country’s actions in war, it absolutely can sway the reactions of our congress and President. An essential element of the moral center of gravity for any conflict is public support. (105, Military Review)

The Vietnam War was a war of mass destruction, leaving Vietnam to become bitterly divided and claiming the many lives of Vietnamese civilians as well as American soldiers. Out of all the wars in American history, the Vietnam War was the first war to be broadly televised and covered by the media. It came to be known as the first “Television War”. Journalists began to pour into Vietnam from all over the nation, to cover the lives of the American Soldiers as well as Vietnamese civilians. As television brought horrendous images of the war into American living rooms, the perception of an American solider as a hero slowly became the image of the American enemy. Thus, the media is a major factor that

The year was 1968. The United States had just been blindsided by one of the bloodiest sneak attacks of the Vietnam War, known as the Tet Offensive. Arthur J. Dommen, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, wrote an article titled, “Hanoi Says U.S. Can’t Win War-- And Knows It.” According to the author, an undisclosed North Vietnamese source boldly stated that the United States was no longer “invincible,” and that the Vietnam War would be an undoubted Communist victory. The North Vietnam Defense Administrator Giap also asserted that, “After the Tet offensive, the men in the Pentagon understood they could no longer win the war militarily.” In a review of the Tet Offensive, however, American military commander General Westmoreland stated that “The enemy failed to achieve his initial objective” and that their “losses have been heavy.” Conflicting reports such as these were troublesome to American citizens. Many wondered why the media and government contradicted each other, and could not determine who was telling the truth.

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.

When analyzing the Vietnam war it is clear that the press had a significant role in helping bring the conflict to an end. Largely, this was the result of the gruesome reports and images that the networks chose to air and the public’s corresponding opposition to the war. To understand this relationship, and hence helping to end the war, it is necessary to look at three distinct areas. These include the reason that the press chose to air gruesome reports, specific reports that outraged the public, and examples of the corresponding changes in public opinion.

This paper scrutinizes the use of propaganda and the consequential effects during the Iraq War. It will look at certain specific events such as George W. Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished moment, as well as other incidents during the war that may have been a tactic to mislead the American public. This paper will also examine the censorship used by the main news media outlets as to how it affected the perspectives of the public. As one of the only means of getting information about a large war the United States was part of, these news outlets, in any type of media, whether it be newspaper or the television, could tell its audience anything, and they would have to accept it without doubt. By using these examples from the Iraq War the

“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.

In the 1960s, the Vietnam War greatly affected American society, as many citizens did not condone of the egregious war, prompting protests. Following attacks by the North Vietnamese, the United States began bombing North Vietnam, leaving Americans to question the government’s motives in this war. Only a small number of citizen backed the anti-war movement at first; however, the exorbitant number of causalities, along with the draft system, caused even more individuals to join the movement. The anti-war protest gained an abundance of publicity and respect after Civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Veterans of Vietnam backed the effort (“Vietnam War Protests”). The atmosphere of protest affected nearly all aspects of life in the

Vietnam War is a war that mainly differentiates from any other war in the history of the modern warfare due to the fact that the first time in history the media was able to act without restrictions and had the opportunity to film and record the war from the frontline of the combat zone. Besides the political and military decisions taken at the wartime, media had a impact on changing destiny of the war. In this essay, in order to show the impact of the media on the war, I will try to examine some of the key events of the Vietnam War, such as the Tet-Offensive, and My Lai Massacre. Were there any misconceptions presented by the media about the war? Was media responsible of the US loss in Vietnam? Is the power of media exaggerated at the time of the war? Throughout the essay, these questions will try to be answered in the contexts of specific events.

The Vietnam War introduced many new forms of technology on and off of the battlefield. Increased weaponry helped shape the outcome of the war, but media coverage also played a large role in representing the news and opinions of the war. Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer helps illustrate how the media influences and spreads the opinions of the people during the Vietnam War. The war media, which includes newspapers, movies, and most importantly television, caters towards its audience. What the media publishes shapes the public opinion, and the media creates their stance based on the profit they receive.

The Tet Offensive played a key role triggering a wave of peak anti-war movements after that. Moreover, after that event, American media “took an increasingly unfavorable view of U.S. public policy” . It was remarkable that in the evening broadcast on February 27, 1968, Walter Cronkite ‘broke the rule’ by giving such comment on CBS evening news: “To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimists we have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.” At the same time, General Westmoreland was reported to have requested more than 260,000 additional troops by the New York Times. All of these events became a catalyst to a public protest.