What Evidence Exists to Demonstrate That the American Media Coverage of the Vietnam War Influenced Its Outcome?

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

Despite numerous inaccurate reports there were attempts of trying to report the war accurately. However whenever a news channel would report Americans getting killed in Vietnam the government would work quickly to cover it up. President Nixon is quoted as saying "the press is our biggest enemy." This one phrase sums up the war. The press would try to report fairly to the American people, but the government would squash it and make the press look bad (Media Beat Vietnam War, Solomon and Cohen). Therefore the press would only report good things so that the government would look highly upon them and give them better seating in white house briefings. This highly affected the people working in Vietnam. They were forced to be there, and the stories they were trying to report were not even reported.

Starting in the mid-1950s and not due to end til the fall of Saigon in 1975, the Vietnam War showcased a fundamental milestone in American mainstream media. Under the leadership of three different presidents; Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, respectively, the United States experienced a turmoil of foreign policy changes, resultant protests, and the rise of a fourth branch of government: the media. Most historians agree that an overwhelming factor to popular opinion and the overall war effort are attributed to the media’s actions during the Vietnam War’s entirety. The public viewed several mediums in the media as a reliable source of information because of its accessibility, stimulating effect, and graphic visuals, which were further heightened

Vietnam was the first war that allowed full freedom to the press, allowing the media to cover the war in their own light. Without censorship, appalling images showed the public the sites of war they had never seen before. Many people believe that the media started the lack of support for the Vietnam War. For example, the Tet Offensive would become “one of the most controversial and climactic events in which the media played a role” (). Until the Tet Offensive, the media had portrayed the U.S. winning the war. However, when the North Vietnamese sprung an attack on the U.S. embassy in Saigonthe, the American public felt as if they were there. As the media started to influence the public through television and magazines, people began to doubt

Vietnam was the longest war in American history and the most disliked American war of the twentieth century. It brought about almost 60,000 American deaths and in an expected 2 million Vietnamese deaths. Indeed today, numerous Americans still ask whether the American exertion in Vietnam was a transgression, a bungle, a vital war, or whether it was a respectable reason, or an optimistic, if fizzled, push to shield the South Vietnamese from totalitarian government. This leads to the question of In what ways did the U.S.’s involvement in the Vietnam Conflict affect American society from 1957 - 1975?

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.

Television was a major participant in this opposition towards the war. Reporters were able to capture living images of the war and bring it directly into the homes of millions Americans. Reporters were able to captures the audience’s attention with heart-felt stories about the death of soldiers and the impact that had on their loved ones back home. The media used these images to make Americans question whether the war was worth it. With incidents like the Kent State massacre, the media was able to use those images which made American fear the government completely which added to the anti-war movement. All three presidents who served in office during the Vietnam War felt opposition from the media. This is extremely important to note the media was not basis to one of the presidents and that the media just opposed the war in general. Although they opposed Nixon and his war efforts the most, but Johnson and Kennedy felt the effects as well. This opposition the media had towards the war also made it extremely difficult for the presidents to gain and maintain the nations support when it came to the war efforts. Anti-war songs, posters and various other types of propaganda all added to the disapproval of the war. To this day, many people still question if the media is to blame for the loss of the Vietnam

“After the Tet Offensive, media coverage of the war became predominantly negative. Images of both civilian and military casualties were increasingly televised.” (Rohn) Tet Offensive was one of the largest campaigns of the Vietnam War, it was a major turning point in media coverage of the war. The media had told a contrary story of what was happening in North Vietnam, which caused the media coverage of the war to become negative. ”Evidence indicates that the press is responsible for revealing the naked, uncensored truth regarding to the war to the American people.” (Dahm) Our U.S. government has evidence that proves that the media was only showing the bad things that were happening during the war by records of the uncensored truth being told to the American

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.

Villagers flee for their lives, as tanks advance behind them. Among the villagers are Americans lugging heavy equipment. These Americans aren’t here to fight, though -- at least not in the traditional sense. They fight with audio and video, instead. (Rewrite Hook) This was live coverage of the Vietnam War, a long, bloody, unforgotten, and unappreciated war. Once these horrifying images were cast onto American screens, United States would find itself covered in ruins. Ruins that would cost years and years to rebuild. (Fix Transition) Media coverage of the Vietnam War ignited a new era of journalism and served as a driving force in the public’s perception of United States involvement in foreign affairs. (Fix/Revise Introduction)

The Vietnam was a revolutionary event in the history of the media’s role in war, since it was the first time where the media was allowed to show the American citizens the reality of foreign wars. With the invention and rapidly gaining popularity of the television set at the end of World War II; by 1964, more than half of Americans “got most of their news” from TV, meaning that people were able to in some way become part of the terrible experiences of the soldiers in Vietnam were living. The mass media radically changed the perception and war, showing to what great extent the forms of communication altered ideals.

Many books, magazine articles, and papers have been written about the Vietnam war and its consequences, but most are written from the perspective of an outsider looking in without actually living in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Few reporters ever came back to Vietnam to live there and describe day-to-day life in Vietnam after the war. Under the control of Communist rulers and an embargo from the US, Vietnam was almost isolated from the western world between 1975 and the very late eighties (one can recognize a similar pattern in North Korea now). Western reporters were not welcome or even permitted to enter Vietnam for reporting purposes without an agreement from government

The objective of the investigation is to determine to what extent the American news media affected the support and result of the Vietnam War. The Vietnam Conflict was officially recognized as a war beginning in 1955, but it was not until the 1960s that U.S. news outlets began coverage on the conflict in Vietnam. Before this era, the news was mainly concerned with reporting issues that had to do with communism and the cold war with Russia. It wasn 't until the North Vietnamese 's communist efforts were more widely known that the U.S. media started covering the issue. Therefore, the investigation will begin around this time period. It will cover how the media affected the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administration. As well as how the public attitudes towards the war shifted from supporting the effort to wanting the troops back home. This investigation is not meant to dispute the conflicting ideologies of communism and democracy but to highlight the conflict between the American media and the American government and how these counterintuitive ideas lead to the downfall of public opinion and eventually the loss of the war.

Shortly thereafter, the very first article in American media about the struggle for power in Vietnam surfaced in 1955 and it was about how communism was on the rise in North Vietnam. The American public was too focused on the anti-communistic attitude of the South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem that they ignored his absolutist tendencies, until civilians were killed in a coupe against the President in the later half of 1960. After this many American reporters from different news outlets, starting with the New York Times, began to go to Vietnam to figure out what was really happening overseas. At this point the Kennedy administration did not have any real combat troops on the ground, only military advisers. So the government did not think much of the journalists going to Vietnam to do some investigative reporting since the United States was not actively engaged in any actual combat.

When we as a nation look back at the Vietnam War, we tend to view the conflict as a loss but we don’t bother looking at the reason for why we lost. Compared to all of the other major conflicts that the US has been involved with in the past century, the Vietnam War is cinematically portrayed in a way of destruction and disorientation, leading to a public opinion of disinterest in the war. The depiction of the Vietnam War in films can be attributed to the transparency of the news media, but it also shows the themes that embody us as a nation. Without the aid of the media and positive propaganda, a war can be lost both on the battlefield and back at home.