Vietnam and the Media

To what extent was media coverage of the Vietnam War responsible for turning American public opinion against the war effort?

Introduction to American Warfare at Home
The United States of America has always fought their wars with great support and enthusiasm, until the Vietnam War. Author Sidney Lens stated that, “Every American war going back to the Revolutionary War of 1776 has had some opposition among civilian population. Sometimes the dissent was negligible, as in the Korean police action or World War Two. Opposition to the Vietnam War was so strong and sustained it took on an unprecedented dimension, becoming known as the war at home” (41). Vietnam changed how America viewed war. Historians believe that America was only able to view Vietnam differently due to the news and media coverage it received, which raises the question, to what extent was media coverage of the Vietnam War responsible for turning American public opinion against the war effort? Every night on television, the body count of the day was reported. Vietnam was “The first was in which television cameras were almost everywhere, recording images of death and violence and bringing them to living rooms with a speed never before contemplated” (Lens 103). America was never prepared for the comprehensive media coverage of Vietnam. Newsreels and radio reports of wars before Vietnam were glorified and never exposed the horrors and the harsh brutalities of war. The coverage of the Vietnam War has a profound effect in American History, it changed the way the United States fights wars, and how Americans view their government to this day. The extensive media coverage of the Vietnam War exposed the American public to the harsh realities of war, and exposing the faults of the government.
The Cold War Prior to Vietnam
	To understand why the Vietnam War happened, it is necessary to go back to the end of World War Two. With the end of World War Two, the Cold War began. Paranoia about the spread of communism and the increasing power and influence of the Soviet Union. In the late 1940’s and the 1950’s the Red Scare spread throughout the country thanks to Senator Joe McCarthy. In 1954, President Eisenhower outlined the Domino Theory to a reporter when he explained that, “When you have a row of dominos set up, you knock over the first one and what will happen to the last one is a certainty- it will go over quickly”.  This theory was used as the justification for the Korean and Vietnam War, to prevent the spread of communism.
	The Korean War was the first war America fought without huge backing and support. Korea had little media coverage and was not as large as a conflict as the past wars of America. The newly formed UN was also involved in the war which justified American support even more. The Korean War was the first proxy war America fought against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union supported North Korea and the newly founded communist regime. The United States and the United Nations backed the democratic South Korea. The Korean War also marked the first time that Congress did not declare war on the opposing country. President Eisenhower used his war powers to send troops to the Korean War, bypassing a declaration of war. The Korean War signaled an end to the way America fought wars. A declaration of war was also bypassed in Vietnam, Robert C. Miller of the United Press International stated that Vietnam, “officially isn’t even a war; historically there is no official date when it started, nor is there a definite objective-like unconditional surrender-required for its finish. There are no campaigns, glorious victories, clear defeats as there were in World Wars One and Two and Korea”.

Early Opposition to Vietnam: The Tet Offensive and the Chicago Police Riot
	In 1964, the Gulf Of Tonkin incident signaled a start to American combat in Vietnam. At the start and onset of the war, there were no large peace rallies or protests, in fact, after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, a Gallup poll taken at the time reported that “85 percent of American People supported the president’s action” (Lens 24). Before the start of Vietnam, Americans trusted their government. The results of the Gallup poll make that evident. The Vietnam War was able to ruin the trust of the people to their government in only nine years.
	Early opposition to the Vietnam War was insignificant. It was not until 1968 that the anti-war movement began to take off. At the beginning of the year on January 30th, the North Vietnamese began what is now known as the Tet Offensive. The Tet Offensive was a sneak attack launched on America and South Vietnam despite a cease-fire made in order to celebrate the Vietnamese holiday of Tet in peace. The Tet Offensive was the first time the American public realized the type of war Vietnam was. In fact, shortly after the Tet Offensive, “Walter Cronkite of CBS News, questioned whether the war could be won and predicted it would end in stalemate”, a prediction that would prove true in 1973 (Lens 83). This statement was also important because it began the media’s distrust of the government. CBS TV correspondent Ron Steainman recounted in his memoir, Inside Television’s First War, “as the war became increasingly unpopular at home after the Tet offensive, the American military worked hard to respect our movement”, an effort made by the government in order to preserve their image to the public (251). The media’s distrust of the government was a belief that would eventually spread to the students and later all the citizens of the United States.
	Media coverage at the home front affected the American public as much as coverage from the front line did. The National Democratic Convention, also occurring in 1968, became another turning point in the opposition against the war in Vietnam. On August 28th, a demonstration of 10,000 anti-war protestors gathered in Grant Park. Sparked by a boy disrespecting an American flag, Chicago police began to run into the crowd, beating protesters. As the police charged into the crowd, they chanted “kill, kill, kill” despite the protestor’s chants of “the world is watching” (Galt 49). At the end of the police riot, “sixty journalists who covered the parks and streets that week were injured, arrested, or had equipment damaged by police” (Lens 85). The Chicago Police Riot was highly publicized. The policemen turned against the journalists that were covering the Democratic Convention, shifting the attention from the convention to the actions of the police and of the American Government. The media coverage affected the American public so much that after the riot, “anti-war sentiment was now so strong that a convention resolution calling for a coalition government in South Vietnam and an end to the war” (Lens 85). The coverage of the police riot only amplified the public’s reaction to the Tet Offensive earlier in the year.
The Washington March and the My Lai Massacre
	On November 3rd, 1969, Richard Nixon made a speech where he stated protestors, “threatened the nation’s future as free society.” Enraged by Nixon’s speech, student groups called for a protest in Washington in mid-November. The protest began on November 13th with a March of Death, a 2 and a half day march where protestors, “carried placards and lighted candles across the Arlington Memorial Bridge, and then stopped in front of the White House and called out the names of the many Americans killed in Vietnam” (Galt 63). Nixon reacted by sending 9,000 troops, worrying protest organizers. After the March of the Dead, between 500,000 and 800,000 protestors marched from Pennsylvania Avenue to the Washington Monument, which became “the largest political march in the country’s history until that time” (63). Instead of the usual anti-war activists and the student protestors, the New York Herald Tribune noted that, “the marchers represent much more of a cross section of America”. The size and scale of the Washington protest brought the anti-war movement to the mainstream for the first time in the Vietnam era. This was the first time in American history where an anti-war movement was not only prominent, but now mainstream. The media coverage of the frontline of Vietnam, the Tet Offensive, and the Chicago Police Riot have all led up to the massive protest in Washington and propelled anti-war sentiments to almost every American. Even though the Washington protest had upwards of half a million attendees, the two most influential events in swaying the American public opinion have not even occurred yet.
	Search and destroy missions were very common in Vietnam. A search and destroy mission entails invading a Vietnamese hamlet through the cover of night and destroying structures being used by communists or neutralizing potential Vietcong sympathizers. The My Lai massacre began as only a simple search and destroy mission. The target was the 48th Viet Cong Local Force Battalion. They were suspected to be taking refuge in the hamlet known as Son My. In a summary report of the incident, the commanding officer, LTC Barker, ordered his men “to burn the houses, kill the livestock, destroy foodstuffs and perhaps to close the wells”(10). Unfortunately, no instructions were issued as to the safeguarding of noncombatants found there. The soldiers who conducted the attack, the men of C/1-20 Infantry or commonly known as “Charlie Company”, were given orders by Barker stating that, “only the enemy would be present in My Lai on 16 March and that the enemy was to be destroyed” (11). On March 4th 1968, between 300 and 500 innocent Vietnamese civilians were killed in what is now known as the My Lai massacre. The massacre was initially reported as a firefight in a village which killed 128 Vietcong and 22 civilians. Despite occurring in March 1968, the My Lai massacre was covered up for over a year. Finally, in November 1969, due to determination of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the story got picked up by “thirty newspapers nationwide” (Kallen 50). Time magazine and Life magazine covered the massacre on November 28th and December 5th respectively. Although the newspaper coverage, and the magazine articles brought attention to the public, the photographs of the massacre illustrated the Vietnam War to the Americans at home. The photographs taken by American GI’s and U.S Army Public Information Detachment photographer Ronald Haeberle who was assigned to Charlie Company the day of the attack, “graphically demonstrated U.S. military policies in Vietnam. As a result of the tense pressure from the public, Calley was court-martialed and found guilty” (50). Calley, the platoon leader of Charlie Company, was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. However, three years later he received a pardon from President Nixon. Calley claimed that he “was ordered to go in there and destroy the enemy...That was my job on that day. That was the mission I was given. I did not sit down and think in terms of men, women and children." Despite later receiving a pardon, the public outcry strong-armed the American government into taking action against its military. Without the photos and the accounts dug up by reporters and journalists, the public would have never been aware of My Lai, or have taken action against those responsible. Coverage of the Tet Offensive, the Chicago Police Riot, and the Washington March have all swayed public opinion, but the media coverage of the My Lai massacre was a monumental step due to the fact that the American public opinion actually forced the government to take action for the first time.


The Pentagon Papers and Government Misconduct
	Near the end of the 1960’s and early 1970’s, anti-war sentiment was at an all-time high. Unfortunately for Nixon and his administration, it is only going to get worse. The Pentagon Papers, released in 1971, ruined the trust of the American people. The Pentagon Papers were made up of many years of classified documents. “In 1968, before he left the Johnson administration, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara ordered a top-secret defense study of the Vietnam War designed to compile in one place the documents from which judgments could be made about what had gone wrong”(Lens 96). These documents ranged from the United States aid of France in 1947, leading up to 1967. The papers were photocopied and leaked to the New York Times by a Pentagon official named Daniel Ellsburg. Surprisingly, Ellsburg had once been, “a gun-toting supporter of the Vietnam effort, and for a short time even a consultant to Kissenger” (96). Despite his early support of the Vietnam War, Ellsburg turned against the Vietnam effort after discovering the Pentagon Papers, containing secrets hidden from the not only the public, but also Congress. His intentions were to, “expose the meaning of the war to all” (96). He leaked the papers to The New York Times, who began publishing parts of the Pentagon Papers on June 19, 1971. Other newspapers like the Washington Post, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times followed suit shortly after. The Pentagon Papers revealed that the government had a role in the 1963 military coup which resulted in the death of the South Vietnamese President, Ngo Dinh Diem, a leader the United States help rise to power. Not only did America know about the impending coup, but CIA agent Lucien Conein even met with the very Vietnamese Generals planning the coup against President Diem. The government’s reasoning behind the war was also found within the Pentagon Papers, according to a memo from the Defense Department during the Johnson Administration, American involvement in Vietnam was primarily, “70% - To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat. 20% - To keep [South Vietnam] (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands. 10% - To permit the people [of South Vietnam] to enjoy a better, freer way of life. ALSO - To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used. NOT - To help a friend”. This memo revealed that the war was not even fought for the reasons that was fed to the American public, the war was primarily fought to maintain the American image and solidify its reputation. The perception of the majority of America before the Pentagon Papers was that government was fighting the war in Vietnam in order to prevent the spread of communism and assist the people of South Vietnam. However, the memo shockingly states that only 10% of the motivation to fight in Vietnam was to assist the people of South Vietnam, which arguably explains the American’s lack of regard for the Vietnamese civilian displayed by events such as the My Lai Massacre and the constant bombing of not only Vietnam, but also surrounding countries such as Cambodia and Laos. The memo also proves suspicion of Vietnam’s status as a proxy war used to oppose Russian influence to be true.  The memo states, “20%-to keep [South Vietnam] (and adjacent) territory from Chinese hands”. China, a communist country allied with the Soviet Union under leader Mao Zedong, had obvious interest in spreading their ideology to Vietnam and other countries in Indochina such as Cambodia and Laos after the French departure from the region. The American people felt betrayed by the Pentagon Papers. However, the aftermath of the release of the Pentagon Papers had a much larger impact on the American people then the content within the papers.
	After the release of the Pentagon Papers, the American Government attempted to cover their tracks. The government tried to censor the release of the classified documents to the media that the Pentagon Papers consisted of. After failing to convince the New York Times to halt the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the government forced them to stop the publications anyways. In a 1996 article commemorating the 25th anniversary of the article, the New York Times stated explained how the government attempted to censor the papers by how they, “sought and won a court order restraining further publication after three articles had appeared”(Apple 7). The court order was appealed by the New York Times, resulting in the landmark Supreme Court case, New York Times Co. v. United States. In a 6-3 decision the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New York Times, allowing them to resume the publication of the Pentagon Papers along with other newspapers involved such as the Washington Post. The media’s release of the classified information and their highly publicized plight against the government only wreaked the support of the American Government and their involvement in Vietnam. The media informed the public and showed them the truth, and as a result, they were prosecuted by criminals. Support for the newspapers and the media poured in from all around the country. The Supreme Court had no other option then to allow the publications to continue on. In addition to attempting to censor the publication of the papers, the Nixon administration also prosecuted Ellsburg for leaking the Pentagon Papers to the media. Author Sidney Lens describes the reasoning behind the prosecution is because the Nixon Administration was, “defeated in this attempt to impose prior censorship of the press for the first time in the peacetime history of the nation, the administration mounted a vigorous campaign to suppress civil rights and individual freedom in this country by any illegal means” (97). Ellsburg was prosecuted under the outdated and controversial Espionage Act of 1917, created to prevent insubordination during the First World War and to suppress the original Red Scare, occurring shortly after the Russian Revolution. The Espionage Act was always controversial ever since its implementation due to the suppression of the First Amendment right to the freedom of speech. Prior to the trial of Ellsburg, the White House domestic affairs chief John Erlichman, “formed a group called the plumbers to investigate Ellsberg”, the plumbers used illegal wiretaps in addition to “breaking into the offices of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to try to find incriminating evidence against him” (Lens 97). The illegal wiretaps were not only used on Ellsberg, the wiretaps were also used issued on government officials and other journalists. Secretary of State Henry Kissenger actually authorized many of these taps himself. The Ellsburg trial began on January 3, 1973, and presided by the United States District Judge, William Matthew Byrne, Jr. On April 26th, evidence of the psychiatrist break in were revealed, and on May 9th, the illegal wiretaps were also revealed to the court. On May 11th, the government claimed they have lost all records of the wiretap, an effort seeming to be made in order to cover their tracks. Also on May 11th, due to government misconduct because of the illegal wiretaps and break-ins, Judge Byrne dismissed all charges and Ellsburg walked free.
The decision of Judge Byrne pleased the American public. The prosecution of Ellsburg was not supported by the American people. Many Americans did not agree with the decision to prosecute him, especially after the Supreme Court upheld the publication of the Pentagon Papers. The trial of Ellsburg was highly publicized and very popular throughout the country. When the details of the illegal wiretaps, break-in, and the plumbers were released, the American public became enraged. The misconduct of the Ellsburg trial only complicated the implications of the Watergate scandal occurring a year earlier in 1972. The Watergate scandal exposed the American public to government misconduct, when President Richard Nixon ordered a wiretap on the Democratic Party’s headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. When Nixon’s men were caught, his administration went into a spiraling mess, attempting to cover their tracks wherever possible. The Watergate scandal ruined the little trust Americans had left in their government. Every government hides secrets to the public, but for a government of a nation as developed as the United States to be involved in a scandal and proved to be corrupt to their people shocked the nation and made them lose trust in whatever endeavors the government was doing, especially the conflict in Vietnam. The Watergate Scandal coupled with the misconduct in the Ellsburg trial proved to the American people that their government was capable of corruption and misconduct. The Ellsburg trial proved that corruption and misconduct was not unique to Watergate, government misconduct has occurred since the Ellsburg trial, and will continue to occur in the United States.
How the Media was Responsible for the Change in Public Opinion
The media coverage of the Vietnam Conflict created a massive anti-war effort, and changed America forever. Television correspondent Ron Steinman, who covered Vietnam, stated in his memoir Inside Television’s First War that, “Our freedom to move where and when we wanted [in Vietnam], though we assumed it to be our right, never went to our head. It led, however, to the Pentagon clamping down on war coverage after Vietnam” (252). Steinman also stated how the comprehensive coverage of Vietnam “hampered the ability for future generations to cover subsequent wars” (252).  He continues, “Many call this payback for the press’s undermining America’s effort in Vietnam” (252). This is especially true to those responsible for the war. Former President Richard Nixon states in his book, No More Vietnams, “No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now” (9). General William Westmoreland, the commander of American military operations in Vietnam stated in a Time Magazine interview that, “Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.” However, the media coverage of Vietnam did not intentionally undermine the war effort”. The media reported the realities of the Vietnam War. The media showed dead bodies, napalm burns, destroyed jungle, and displaced refugees to everyone in America, the horrors of war no longer restricted to the soldiers fighting it. The brutal nature of war that was never before seen, convinced many Americans to join the anti-war movement. Many of those who still were not involved in the growing anti-war movement were most likely lost their support of the government when the government scandals such as the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate Scandal got publicized got the rest of America involved. The media exposed the White House and the Pentagon who, “consistently mangled the truth and were caught in one lie after another” (252). At this point in time, Vietnam was an unpopular war fought by soldiers who did not want to fight it. The population felt more disconnected to the government as the war went on. The United States had no connection to Vietnam prior to the war. There was not a sweep of patriotic fervor throughout the nation when the United States entered the war. Most Americans had no idea why their government led them into the Vietnam War. Finally, the real reason for entering the war was unknown until the leaking of the Pentagon Papers, the White House and Pentagon lied to its constituents and even to Congress. The aftermath of the Pentagon Papers led up to the Watergate Scandal and the illegal wiretaps and break-ins of Ellsburg’s trial. These scandals led to Nixon’s resignation, leaving his Vice-President Gerald Ford with the presidency. Despite facing the humiliation of admitting a losing a war to poorly guerilla fighters, Ford was left with no other choice then to withdraw from Vietnam in 1975. The media in Vietnam showed the Americans the truth about war. Americans turned against their government when the media brought the scandals and the realities of warfare to their living room. Support for the Vietnam War waned in America throughout the conflict due to the media’s portrayal of the harsh realities of war, exposure of the government’s scandals, and the attention brought to the plight of the anti-war movement.