Vietnam War and Media Essay

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

After a disastrous battle in 1963, in which the U.S. had lost numerous helicopters and their aboard crew, the press identified strategic blunder and saw “reluctant Vietnamese infantrymen” as the reason for the failed mission. The U.S. government tried to depict the mission as successful, indicating a major point of divide between the government and the media, the media turned to “the word of angry South Vietnamese officials, angry U.S advisors, and hostile American pilots who risked their lives daily without recognition” as their basis of evidence regarding the incident and incidents to come. Another question was left to be raised, where were these televised materials coming from? In accordance with the actual content; much of what was recorded was done by the US Army photographic agency beginning after much controversy caused by the filming of burning the village of Cam Ne by American troops.

Moss, G.D. (2010), Vietnam an American ordeal (6th ed.), Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall

Vietnam was an entirely new type of war for the United States. It still remains morally and historically problematic in today’s society. The Vietnam War had a tremendous impact on American society and culture, primarily because it was the first war to be televised. The American press played a significant

The Vietnam War is in no doubt, one of the most controversial conflicts that the United States has been involved in. “The fear of Communism sparked the United States to take major foreign initiatives after World War II” (Document 6). As stated previously in that quote, the Vietnam War as well as many other conflicts of the Cold War era all stemmed from one thing: the United State’s perhaps “irrational” fear of Communism. This paper will discuss the legality of the Vietnam war through moral and legal perspectives. The Vietnam war was illegal by; violating moral standards, the United State’s Constitution, and multiple United Nations agreements.

His narrative begins well before American forces set foot in Vietnam, delving into French colonialism 's contribution to the 1945 Vietnamese revolution, and revealing how the Cold War concerns of the 1950s led the United States to back the French. The heart of the book covers the "American war," ranging from the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem and the impact of the Tet Offensive to Nixon 's expansion of the war into Cambodia and Laos, and the final peace agreement of 1973. Finally, Lawrence examines the aftermath of the war, from the momentous liberalization-"Doi Moi"-in Vietnam to the enduring legacy of this infamous war in American books, films, and political debate.

The Vietnam War loomed predominantly over three U.S. presidencies. When John F. Kennedy came to the presidency, he immediately inherited Dwight Eisenhower’s commitment to assist Saigon in its struggle

1. STATEMENT OF RESEARCH QUESTION Throughout the years, the Vietnam War has lived up its name as “one of the most obscure episodes and, at the same time, one of the most serious conflicts not only of the Cold war period but also of the whole modern history” (Hodboďová, 2008). It was apparently the most long-lasting conflict in American history and most disfavored war that broke out after World War II and ended in 1975. The peculiarity of this war lies not only in its prolonged duration but also in an overriding number of war casualties, or in other words, the death and destruction to the country’s people. Averagely in the struggle, more than one million Vietnamese soldiers and over 58,000 Americans were killed, not to mention the massacre

The Vietnam War that took place between 1954 and 1975, was a war that many of us struggled to behold in the first place. There were different opinions and impressions that led the public to think different outcomes of the war. But, the public had the correct intentions. The war was not something that could be won, even though the South Vietnam were backed up by other countries including Australia who had a great deal of responsibility. The South Vietnam had no chance of winning this war for many reasons such as the publicity of the war, the terrain where they were fighting, and even the South Vietnamese war regime. The Vietnam War was destined for failure from the start…

The United States government started to become more involved in Vietnam when the Eisenhower administration “authorized covert operations against the North, while in the South, the United States took over the French role in military training and nation building.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower was careful not to become directly involved in Vietnam. This was due to France’s loss of the Asian colony of Vietnam during their military intervention, the belief that communism may prevail in the country, and during the fifties, the United States was more concerned about the race of nuclear buildup with the Soviet Union. In the end, Eisenhower believed that “American intervention in Indochina seemed moderate an investment. Yet Southeast Asia was mined with unexpected dangers and trials for the nation.” Soon, John F. Kennedy would become president of the United States after Eisenhower in 1961, and “covert operations continued and became more difficult to control.” Because of reports coming into the White House of how more would need to be done in Vietnam by the United States, to support the regime of South Vietnamese President Diem, “Kennedy…authorized the dispatch of

The 1960’s and the Vietnam War are not often regarded as one of America’s finer moments in history. The increasing popularity of the television set in the 1960’s allowed for a window into the war, and the brutality that the American people saw did not increase national pride, but rather implanted doubts into the minds of Americans as to whether or not our soldiers were really the good guys in this case. Where WWII had involved the Nazi’s, the epitome of the bad guys, the Vietnam War had no such case. The dark sadism of the Nazi’s had once been a stark contrast to America’s virtuous soldiers, but the Vietnam War was a confounding fusion of the good and the bad. As Ph. D. Leslie Gelb explains, “the morality of that [Vietnam] War was very confused” (Brokaw 137). This idea was reflected in the following decade, the 1970’s, when movies began to portray their protagonist as a complex character with flaws rather than the traditional faultless hero. In essence, the Vietnam War of the 1960’s led to the rise of the antihero in 1970’s American Cinema.

Images of both civilian and military casualties were increasingly televised. The percentage of victory stories reported by journalists decreased from 62 before to 44 after the Tet... As the war became uglier on screen, its public support also declined significantly.”() once the careful image professional advisors built came crumbling down so did the last of people's support for the war. Nick Ut’s photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, better known as Napalm Girl, was incredibly influential because everyone saw the kids in their own lives as the young girl running naked through the streets with a look of absolute terror on her face. This picture horrified people because they were used to seeing groups of children happily playing, not badly burned and trailed by soldiers in full combat

The coincidence of the growth of television with the first military defeat for America was used by the government to explain why the war was lost: it wasn’t because of government policy or by underestimating the enemy but because television journalism and lack of censorship that undermined the whole operation “by ‘graphic and unremitting distortion’ of the facts, pessimism, and unvarnished depiction of both Americas youthful casualties and American ‘atrocities’ inflicted on the Vietnamese.” The amount of televisions in America was on the increase; ‘In 1950, only 9 percent of homes owned a television. By 1966, this figure rose to 93 percent.’ This alone shows the sheer coverage that the news had and the potential influence that it could impose upon the minds of the people. Not only did more people have television sets in their homes but more and more people were relying on television over any other medium to obtain their news. The survey conducted by the Roper organisation for the Television Information Office in 1972 shows us that 64% of people got most of their news from television, an 8% increase from the survey conducted in 1964. Another factor in the power of television was not just the fact that it reached a wide audience, it was also the fact that people were more likely to believe what the television news said over reports in the newspaper or radio, especially if the reports were conflicting in nature. This was due to two factors; the personality who

In 1954, Northern and Southern Vietnam entered a war that led to the death of nearly 3 million people including civilians, Vietnamese troops, and ally soldiers. Though the number of lives lost during the war is atrocious, so are some of the other lasting effects of the “poor man’s fight”. Throughout this essay, I will explain my opinion regarding what I believe were the costs and the benefits of U.S interaction in the war in Vietnam.

The Vietnam War, 1954-1975, started as a conflict between Vietnam and France as an Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam. After many years, the French were defeated at a mountain outpost called Dien Bien Phu, which showed the French that they can no longer keep control in Vietnam and resulted in the French making a peace agreement with Vietnam in Geneva, Switzerland in 1954. The Geneva Peace Accords was a temporary agreement of a partition between Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel. In addition, the Geneva Accords stated that “Vietnam would hold national elections in 1950 to reunify the country.” The United States did not agree with this and John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State and President Eisenhower created the “Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).” In 1955, the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN or South Vietnam) was created. Later that year, Ngo Dinh Diem won an election that made him president of the GVN. Diem eventually abused his power and claimed that they were being attacked from Communists in the north so America would send help. Soon the Kennedy administration was split on the Diem regime and what actions should be taken to fix the issues at hand. On December 20, 1960, the Communist Party’s new united front, the National Liberation Front (NLF), was created. The NLF would take anyone as long as they went against Diem and wanted to unify Vietnam. In 1961, President Kennedy sent people to report the conditions in the South. The report was later