At the beginning of the Vietnam War the media or press, as some might call it, was very supportive of the war. They showed a lot of footage where the American soldiers were portrayed as ‘heroes’, just like it says in the article “good guys shooting Reds” – Erin McLaughlin.
But all this positive support from the media began to decline in fall, 1967.
During 1967, around 50 million people in America were watching the news each night of which around 90% was about the war in Vietnam, including video footage. The video footage, however, was all uncensored.
What this meant is that that every television viewer back in the United States of America was able to watch the glory of their soldiers fighting in battle, but the footage also showed the gruesome truth about the war, like massacres.
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| The television showed a lot of unaltered footage |
Though the positive support from the media was slowly and continuously declining through the 1960’s, the biggest decline, however, was related to the Tet Offensive, which occurred in January 1968, around half a year after the start of the media support decline.
The Tet Offensive was a military campaign made by the People’s Army of Vietnam, or the Reds as the Americans called them. This campaign happened on a special holiday called Tết Mậu Thân (Tet, year of the monkey), thus the name Tet offensive.
There were previously announced through radio, in both the Northern and Southern Vietnam that there would be a 2-day ceasefire, which was obviously only heard by the Americans. All though the Americans were victorious during the campaign, due to the fact that People’s Army of Vietnam or the Northern Vietnam had suffered the most casualties, the media, however, showed in fact that the Americans had suffered a great defeat, which in fact was misleading.
This marked the beginning of the anti-war support from the media.
The full article: WarBirdForum
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| Due to the fact that the media showed a lot of uncensored footage of the war in Vietnam, Richard Nixon blamed the media for losing the war. |
The reason why Nixon blamed the media was that the media had no censor, as previously mentioned. What this meant for the people and the government of America was that a lot of grim scenarios were shown to the public, thus resulting in a lot of protests from the people of America, all this led to a very unpopular war and of course a very unpopular president since he was continuing the war, even though he said he would end it during his election campaign.
A funny fact is that after Richard Nixon was elected as the 37’ president of the United States of America, around 300 American soldiers were killed each week in the Vietnam War, which was a significantly higher number than before Nixon took office as president. So one may wonder whether he even had a right to blame anybody for losing the war.
The full article: Nixon
As previously told the media played a huge role, particularly the television due to the fact that the television actually showed what happened in the Vietnam War unlike the radio, newspapers had a big role as well but the television had the biggest impact of them all. It was considered a “window to the world”, since it showed the reality of the war.
Learn more about the media in the Vietnam War in the video after the break.
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