What role did the news media play in the Vietnam Conflict?
1 Answer
They helped to show the real face of war but also to question the versions of the situation supplied by the authorities.
Explanation:
Newspapers, radio and in particular television, with its power to show directly the terrible images of the horrors of fighting, helped to shape an opinion in the public leading the people to criticize the situation and the goals of the war fought in Vietnam.
Where the government officials and the generals were describing a winning situation, news and images from the front told a different story.
The Tet offensive is an example of this; although a military disaster for the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army it was nevertheless a psychological and media success that had a terrible impact on the public in the US.
A lot of people started to question the truth behind the official bulletins where the war was described as a picnic and victory only few days away; people started to realize that the war was stalling and every day was paid with the lives of sons, fathers or husbands. The fightings in the streets of the old city of Hue' showed the horrors of modern warfare (napalm, fragmentation grenades, horrible shrapnel wounds, etc.), the desperation of the GI and of the civilians and the suicidal resolution of the VC fighters.
Before Vietnam, for example in the Pacific during WWII, news arrived after days or weeks passing through censorship and heavy editing from the authorities (showed in the cinemas as interval in between western movies or even war patriotic ones!). Now in Vietnam, journalists want to be the first, they want to sell news...they are not going to wait or modify the news to please the authorities!
News arrive raw and fast now!
