MEDIA ON VIETNAM WAR
Vietnam became a topic on the news headlines in the United States immediately after the substitutional numbers of the troops of the US had been devoted to the war which occurred in the spring of 1965. The news by that time in Indochina was very few but after 1968 the news coverage increased and was over 600 news coverage in Vietnam during the war. They included radio, U.S wire services, and television networks and news magazines, and newspaper chains. The news media were given transportation by the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) and this gave them the freedom to get to the ground and get the news first hand. It was risky for the journalist to be at the ground during the war and some lost their lives. However, many spend their time in Saigon which was the capital of South Vietnam and they got their coverage from a daily briefing of U.S public affairs.
The conflict in Vietnam was viewed as the “first television war” (Marr, 22). The film was flown to Tokyo for editing and development then taken to the United States. Crucial news than could be taken to the United States with the help of Tokyo satellites. The television brought conflicts to the newsroom in the US, several news was aired after the war rather than in the midst of one and several were conventional news stories. The news stories on the war were not filmed records from Vietnam but they were just reports on the wire service dispatches and given to the anchormen to read.
The news media brought a loss in the war since they tended negative reporting which assisted to undermine support for the battle in the US while its uncensored issued valuable information to the enemy in the united states. Before 1968 media were helping the effort of the U.S in the war in Vietnam. Walter Cronkite assessment on February 1968 who was the news anchor of CBS evening news when he said that the conflict was “mired in stalemate” was viewed by many as the signal of a sea change in broadcasting on Vietnam which encouraged president Lyndon B. Johnson to claim that ” “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America (Keeton, 201).” The hike in the pessimistic and skeptical tone from the news may have echoed rather than develop the same feelings with all the Americans. News from the war was uncensored, but when the war was taking place there were situations were MACV found journalists guilty of going against the laid down military security. American disillusionment was a result of many reasons and the media coverage was one of them. What most undermined provision for the battle was US casualties: the higher the casualty cases, the lesser the level of public support for the war. Which was the public perception of the war.
Works cited
Keeton, Patricia, and Peter Scheckner. American war cinema and media since Vietnam: Politics, ideology, and class. Springer, 2013.
Marr, David G. The mass media in Vietnam. Canberra, ACT: Dept. of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University., 2017.