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Wartime Media coverage : the United States media and the Vietnam War

The mass media are the backbone of any democratic state. Their role goes beyond the fact of

relating news stories and political information. They are called “the fourth branch of

government” thus they have the duty to watch over national democracy, and to work

independently. Still it’s an ideal concept of the media corporation functionality .In fact, media

and especially in United States are held by major conglomerates and there is an obvious still

shameless relationship between media owners and elite political officials. Through the history

of the United States we can analyze different incidents that compromised to the truthfulness

of media or its power to recount facts without an implicit intention to influence public

opinion. Propaganda is probably the main strategy that US government uses to strengthen

patriotism and national duty especially in wartime .Propaganda is by definition: the

information, ideas, opinions or images often only giving one part of an argument, which are

broadcast, published or in some other way spread with the intention of influencing people's

opinions (Cambridge dictionary).

Us history is the most fuelled history with foreign military interventions and foreign political

issues and it is probably what fostered its popularity worldwide. What makes it even

interesting is the fact of its power to turn a national political issue into a private and personal

issue. Any military foreign intervention has to become a personal issue for any American

citizen and it leans on different strategies to make it so. Propaganda is the best US weapon to

legitimize and justify any military foreign invasion.

The U.S. military maintains a variety of connections both direct and indirect with media

industries. In wartime, on the one hand, we witness a military war with real weapons, military
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strategies and soldiers, on the other hand, we witness a psychological war which is: the war of

minds and opinions with the media playing with their own weapons: television, radio,

newspapers…

A nation at war cannot escape the custom of using propaganda to influence the public

opinion. The United States championed this area .Its media interference in political foreign

cases is its best example that’s why in this paper I will focus on the Vietnam War, and its

media coverage. First I deal with contextualizing the war and the role of media in covering it

and then focus on the Mass media and how it affects social movement; in other words: how

news coverage of the U.S.-Vietnam War helped spark the 1960s anti-war movement.

The Vietnam War was between the communistic North Vietnam and the democratic South

Vietnam .North Vietnam attempted to overthrow the South Vietnam and unite Vietnam under

one communistic Government .The United States joined the Vietnam War to prevent

communism from spreading throughout south East Asia.

“The U.S. also ideologically opposed the growing Communist movement in Vietnam and it

was this factor that motivated President Johnson to initiate a military offensive against

Vietnam in 1964, effectively declaring the U.S.’s own war against Vietnam” (Bailey & Farber

38)

The media cover of this war was unusual at that time .In fact, it was the first time that a war

was broadcasted in national American television, so everyone was aware of what was

happening in Vietnam and there were also several reporters who made it to Vietnam to report

a day by day progression of the American troops. The coverage of the Vietnam War was a

turning point in reporting journalism. Enthusiasm and exited investigation was no more

popular. The viewers were introduced to a new kind of journalism were brutality and violence

are its motto. Marshall McLuhan, the famous Canadian communication theorist, said
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“Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost

in the living rooms of America not on the battlefields of Vietnam”

The sixties were a delicate period for the United States, the nation has to keep its popularity

among its people and all over the world .That country won the Second World War, it is the

first world’s superpower and the number one enemy of Communism. America had to gain the

support of Americans, that’s why American viewers were bombarded by images, stories,

reports, military diaries… by live witnesses: reporters, journalists, militaries… in Vietnam.

Visual media were, in fact, a major element in propaganda but it turns out to be a double

edged weapon .It made the Americans conscious about the unnecessary intervention in this

war and raised the anti-war feeling among the mass. "Wartime propaganda attempts to make

people adjust to abnormal conditions, and adapt their priorities and moral standards to

accommodate the needs of war. To achieve this, propagandists have often represented warfare

by using conventional visual codes already established in mass culture. Thus, recruitment

posters have often been designed to look like advertisements or movie posters" (Clark 103)

My Lai Massacre (March 16, 1968) is largest single American atrocity; U.S. Army Infantry

Company killed 504 unresisting women, children, and old men .The army tried to cover the

massacre up but one sickened soldier reported it to Congress. Photographs were found. Only

Lieutenant William Calley, the officer in charge, was put on trial. He was found guilty,

sentenced to 20 years in prison but released after a few years (Anderson 108) .The news of the

massacre were reported by the media instantly and the reports deeply shocked American

public opinion.“With the conflict suddenly caught in the media spotlight, a small group of war

correspondents were sent to Vietnam. The reporters were from the NYT, Herald

Tribune, AP , UPI , Reuters and AFP . Stringers and or reporters from Newsweek,

Sunday, Daily Telegraph and the Observer soon followed” (Knightly 58) and eventually when

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the conflict escalated further "Indochina was flooded with war correspondents" (Herman &

Chomsky 193)

Us government launched a propaganda that went out of their hands. In other words it became

uncontrollable. Citizens were watching and making their own opinion about the war what was

seen became unacceptable Chomsky, by mean of his article: Propaganda, American style held

an opinion that «due to the widespread opposition. To the Vietnam War, the propaganda

system lost its grip on the beliefs of many average Americans. They grew skeptical about

what they were told.”

Media at that time was very supportive to the American government and was pursuing this

war only to report, to assert that America was wining and to consolidate America’s ideology

of ending communism. In his classic study of war correspondents, Phillip Knightley described

the reporting from Vietnam during the early 1960’s as”... not questioning the American

intervention itself, but only its effectiveness. Most correspondents, despite what Washington

thought about them, were just as interested in seeing the United States win the war as was the

Pentagon. What the correspondents questioned was not American policy, but the tactics used

to implement that policy...”

Social and media critic Edward S. Herman analyses the role of the media during the Vietnam

War, and he wrote an article beginning with the following question: Was the New York

Times really a liberal newspaper? He argues that The Times was actually "a war promoter"

and supportive of the aggressive policies of both Johnson and Nixon. Even after the war,

Herman adds, The Times perpetuated the suffering of Vietnamese people by endorsing the

economic boycott of their battered nation. (1998)

By the mid 1960’s television was considered to be the most important source of news due to

its rarity but it still lacking the influence of the historical dominated ones which are

newspapers, magazines and photographs .The Vietnam War is a classic example of America’s
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pro propaganda war but it was a media disaster. In this article we can conclude that whatever

effort the media and the government tried to cover and manipulate the opinions they cannot

cover real facts and the truth America was losing the war and this is what Americans felt and

made them against this war and turn the pro propaganda war into an anti propaganda war. The

Vietnam War, also known as “The Living Room War” was the first major American conflict

with constant exposure to the violence of war in the media, Americans began to doubt their

government and protest the war, even the media was reflecting selectively what was

happening in Vietnam and the government had a constant watch over in the media reporting at

home. The grounds behind the official reason for withdrawal from Vietnam are until now

imprecise but the anti war movement led in diverse universities and cities by students and

citizens was one of the major reasons.

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References

Beth L. Bailey , Dave Farber. America in the seventies. University Press of Kansas (May

2004).

Clark, Toby, Art and Propaganda in the Twentieth Century .Harry N. Abrams (September 1,

1997).

David L. Anderson, ed., Facing MyLai: Moving Beyond the Massacre. University Press of

Kansas (October 20, 2000)

Herman, E.S, and Chomsky, N. Manufacturing Consent: The political economy of the mass

media .New York: Pantheon Book.

Knightly, P. The First Casualty .London: Pan Books, 1975.

Z Magazine/Net, (October 1 1998).