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Role of the media in the Vietnam war
Role of the media in the Vietnam war
Role of the media in the Vietnam war
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Recommended: Role of the media in the Vietnam war
War can change a man’s life more than life can change a man itself. Many of us just simply don’t understand until we truly experience it. Tim O’ Brien, the author of “How to Tell a True War Story,” goes in depth in the day to day lives of American soldiers in their involvement in the Vietnam War. While American soldiers, highly regarded as the best throughout the world, the Vietnam War resulted in a failure that tarnishes the reputation that America was known for. To further justify the consequences, Tim O’ Brien describes the hardships and horrors that soldiers experienced through the use of profanity, asyndeton, and symbolism to convey on the realities of war.
With the media increasing its role in informing the American public about the war in detail, along with graphic images, war atrocities, such as the My Lai Massacre, became more difficult to cover up, which stirred even more violent public outcry. Not long after the media broadcasted the massacre, the release of the “Pentagon Papers” diminished what little trust was left of the government. The My Lai Massacre and the Pentagon Papers were two of the greatest contributors to the U.S. government credibility gap because the massacre exposed the horrors of an already controversial war and how far the government would conspire to conceal the truth, and the Pentagon Papers exposed numerous other government cover ups. The My Lai Massacre contributed to the widening credibility gap and mistrust of the U.S. government because it revealed the government’s readiness to cover up atrocities that would add to the criticism of the government’s actions.
As David Farber illustrates in The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s, “Between the summer of 1964, when the Johnson administration achieved passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and the April 1965 antiwar rally, the American combat role in Vietnam had escalated greatly” (141). In the mid 1960s, a bloody and violent war was in full swing overseas between Vietnamese and American soldiers. On the American home front though, citizens of the US began to question whether it was wise to remain in the war or pull American troops back home. Two major groups began to spring up: advocates for the war and those against it.
The 1960’s and early 1970’s was a period when America was involved in many conflicts overseas, including the Vietnam War. This began a time when media spread quickly as well as influenced the public heavily and wars were first televised. These conflicts ultimately caused citizens to protest and question the motives of the federal government. A large number of these protestors were students who sought to combat problems through various tactics to get authority figures to remedy the problems they identified. Student protestors sought to combat many immediate and long-term problems involving this time period and the Vietnam War.
Embedded journalists are side by side with a military unit, so can be expected to report happenings as seen from inside a soldier’s world. That vantage point however, should not be discounted entirely but seen as enriching our information about what is going on in a conflict. Government limitations media coverage of war, however, causes me real concern. In an editorial in The Washington Post, David Ignatius expressed a similar opinion.
During this period of the late 1950s, American society primarily fixated on the threatening presence of communism. When the media managed to cover the early Vietnam War, the coverage solely revolved around the context of overarching Cold War ideological themes and thus exerted minimal influence in changing the public perception of US involvement. The press’s limited reporting framework at the onset deemphasized the public’s necessity to focus on the proxy war in its
As technology began to develop, televisions, video cameras, and audio recorders would begin to spread due to decreasing costs, in turn increasing the spread of the details regarding the Vietnam War across America. With this rise in technology prevalence in the lives of people, also came the challenge for the government to attempt to censor what was put on media was extremely difficult, and as a result of a lack of proper control, uncensored footage and pictures of the war would be presented to the public. The brutality and harsh reality of the war, being seen directly, as opposed to simply hearing of it, would change the view of the war as a whole. Due to the widespread influence that the media had, and the fact that "there were so many media members in country … the chances of keeping anything secret or off limits was virtually impossible." Presenting the Tet Offensive, much of the negatives of the war were revealed, where much focus was on the mistakes and failures of the United States, as opposed to the victories and factors that they had succeeded in, such as the military victory for the Tet Offensive.
As though the United States had access to the television set during the Vietnam War, the United States produced propaganda and media through radio broadcasts, news reels from local movie theatres and the newspapers during World War II. Like how position of media played a vital role in the Vietnam War for the public, the different sources were able to connect the country with the war as it gave progress, events and information of the soldiers fighting outside of the United States. The people documenting and reporting within the war front were able to manage an extensive amount of interaction with the American troopers either on the battlefield or on transport vehicles. (National Archives, Communication - News and Censorship) With the information
The media censorship during the Vietnam War affected the perception of many U.S. citizens, because the Vietnam War was “the first war that issued full freedom of press”, this meant giving the media the freedom to show the whole world how they saw war (par.1). A lot of the media showed lack of the truth in their showings. The media made also made a big impact on the U.S. citizens because most of them were against the war. The media that was most known were the more dramatic ones because they were the ones that drawled attention audience, which were Americans and the enemy. The technology during this time was much better so things could be transferred to television much quicker grasping the attention of American citizens.
The Vietnam war was constantly broadcasted, with regular citizens being able to keep up with current events. Even though the news, the life of a soldier was not accurately portrayed and didn’t prepare folks back home for the reality of the situation. , There was no level of sympathy for these people as the average day citizen couldn’t compare this to anything in their own lives. Travesties happened overseas, as they often do with war however no Americans back home had been conditioned to
There are very few things in existence that can impact and help shape many parts society as television is able to do. With just the press of a button, a person can gain a front row seat to different aspects of the world such as politics, news updates, entertainment, or travel, without having to leave the comfort of their living room. Information wasn’t always this easy to attain though. Television, an everyday amenity, took decades of time and research for inventors to create. America during the 1920’s had very little in means of communication when compared to today’s media.
This panel, therefore, reflects the foundation of the anti-war movement. Protesters were driven to oppose the Vietnam War because of its extremity and, again, “pointless butchery.” The conflict was heavily featured in news and media, which allowed the American public to follow events from the comfort, or discomfort, of their homes. Because of this exposure, the war was given the name “the living room war” (Hill & Helmers Ed., 2004, p. 4). The role of the media is applied to this panel, as the Watchmen comics represent a continued critique of American participation in the Vietnam War and its lasting effects, as well as a general anti-war sentiment embodied in the characterization of Blake as a superhero.
In the last few decades, state was recognized as the most sophisticated actor in regards to the mediatisation of conflicts. During that time, with the exception of Vietnam War, the public has rarely witnessed the true reality of war on their television screens. This is because, the war reporting has been sanitized, which means, the images of death were filmed and photographed, but they have never been revealed to the public. Fast-forward to today’s transformed heteropolar media landscape, it can be seen that the state’s domination in the mediatisation of conflict has been diminished by the rivalry of the non-state armed groups. Adopted the same media strategy as the state, the non-state armed groups have begun to wage their war in and through
The journalists provided documents and pictures to show Americans what was really going on over there. I personally think the Vietnam War ended because it was no longer having the support at home from Americans because of what they saw on the news. The Vietnam War was not censored back then compared to those recently. The government manipulates journalist’s report about the war oversees, so that they can maintain support from the citizens back home and continue the war. For instance, there was tension between the United States military and the media during the Iraqi War.
There are two basic ideas that can be taken from any war. War is expensive and war is hell. The second of these ideas is the premise of countless media adaptations; the violence of war has been captured, reenacted, and even created on film for viewers all over the world to enjoy. Even though war is a treacherous event, the general public enjoys viewing all of the gory details that entail. The American public’s fascination with war dates back to the Civil War; at the battle of Bull Run, northern citizens watched the battle while picnicking on the sidelines.
