HOW TV DISILLUSIONED AMERICA:
VIETNAM WAR IN THE 1960S
An Idaho State University Student Project
The original caption for this photograph reads:
Vietnam...."Home is where you dig" was the sign over the fighting bunker of Private First Class Edward, Private First Class Falls and Private First Class Morgan of the 1st Battalion, 7th Regiment, during Operation Worth, 1968.
This primary source comes from the Records of the U.S. Marine Corps.
National Archives Identifier: 532482
The war in Vietnam was the first major American conflict to be televised. For the first time, people could watch the horrors of war from their own homes. Not only did this affect moral and opinion, but in many cases contributed to a failing confidence in the government as government statements contradicted news reports.
Vietnam Reporting Bias
Like with everything, there were pros and cons to the large amount of visual reporting during Vietnam. One of the most obvious cons was the bias of news stations. Many reasons drove network bias:
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1. Driven by the needs of the consumer society, television broadcasting had to create stories that the American population cared about.
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2. Information was not always reliably available, leading reporters to depend on second-hand sources.
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3.Visual Broadcasting and "visual facts" often distorted events and did not allow for objective reporting.
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4. "News Broadcasting is an entirely selective process." Every stage of the process, decisions were made of what to include and what to lead out, of what to emphasize or repress. That lead to bias, whether that be intentional or unintentional.
Photograph of US soldiers firing
rounds at Viet Cong during Operation “Wheeler,” 1967
National Archives Identifier: 66956851
Operation “Cook”: While on a search and destroy mission in the mountains of Quang Ngai Province, a Viet Cong guerilla is captured by the 2nd Battalion 502nd Infantry, 101st Airborne Brigade. The VC is tied to a pole and guarded while CPT Dennis K. Anderson calls for a helicopter to evacuate the prisoner. 1967.
National Archives Identifier: 66956851
1. Vietnam as an "American story"
During the Cold War, including the war in Vietnam, American journalism followed the basic value of ethnocentrism, which kept all of the reporting focused on the home base. If it did not involve America and/or Americans, it would not make it on the popular TV news broadcasts. Thus, the conflict in Vietnam did not start to make headlines and daily TV news until combat troops first entered into Vietnam in 1965.
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From then on, the coverage of Vietnam had to acclimate to popular opinion.
"The journalists...were motivated, not by political or ideological bias, but, rather, by the need to satisfy the imperatives of the American news industry."
The Media and the Vietnam War, Clarence Wyatt.
2. The Government Classifies
"The degree to which the public has confidence in the information that it receives, whether from the government, the military, and news organizations, greatly affects the degree to which it will support any military conflict."
The Media and the Vietnam War, Clarence Wyatt.
From the 1930s onwards, as the role of the federal government and Cold War pressures both increased, the government started imposing classifications of information, effectively "stonewalling" Vietnam journalists for many years. Meant to keep the government in control of Vietnam's image, it actually only served to alienate the press (and therefore receive negative news coverage) and cost the government the people's trust.
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In 1962, this stonewalling process solidified with policy Cable 1006. Throughout of the 7 statements, implementing a number of restrictions on American journalists, Americans at home were denied the "whole story." They were unaware of America's ever-growing role in Vietnam and became increasingly reliant on the story-telling narrative of the news. Television, America's new favorite mass media, only exacerbated the problem with visual reporting. This is where over half of America received their news of the War.
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During Operation “Crimp” near Bien Hoa, RVN, the 28th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division found a Viet Cong village while on a search and destroy mission SGT Richard McConchie watches a fire he started. 1966.
National Archives Identifier: 66956851
Women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Vietcong fire on 1 January 1966
Photo by Horst Faas/AP, taken from The Guardian.
3. "Visual Facts" and Visual Reporting
Being stonewalled from important information, many news stations, especially the visually-motivated medium like television, relied on image stories to tell the story the government was keeping quiet.
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According to news agency agendas and the consumers' wants, news reports highlighted the violence and neglected any stories of goodwill, leaving no room for unbiased, "see-all-sides" reporting.
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"When television covered its 'first' war in Vietnam it showed a terrible truth of war in a manner new to mass audiences. A case can be made, and certainly should be examined, that this was cardinal to the disillusionment of Americans with this war, the cynicism of many young people towards America..."
CBS News Director in Washington, William Small, via "Television and the Vietnam War," Michael Mitchell.
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But cameramen were told to "shoot bloody" because TV had to give the people what they want, and that was something visually visceral, something that reinforced their distrust of the government and their hate for the war, especially after the Tet Offensive of 1968.
4. Creating a News Broadcast-Selection
"In analyzing which events to broadcast, the amount of time to be allocated to each comment, and what emphasis to place on each event, the reporter, the editor, and the producer are all guided by their personal philosophies and preferences."
"Television and the Vietnam War," Michael Mitchell
The shortcomings of this subjective reporting is multifold. The "visual facts" of TV meant that most visually compelling stories were chosen. Time restraints led producers and editors to oversimplify often quite complicated conflicts and also did not allow for the Vietnam to be viewed as a continuous struggle, but instead viewed as 2-3 segments of pain and peril.
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"Government regulations, economic necessities and uniform procedures for selecting, editing, and producing programs all led to a news presentation with a definite cant... Because of this reality, the overall picture of the war in Vietnam presented by the networks was incomplete, far from accurate, yet probably inevitable."
"Television and the Vietnam War," Michael Mitchell.
Under sniper fire, a Vietnamese woman carries a child to safety as US marines storm the village of My Son, near Da Nang, searching for Vietcong insurgents, 25 April 1965.
Photo by Eddie Adams/AP, taken from The Guardian.
Trang Bang Road, 1972
Although slightly out of the 1960s decade, this photograph by Nick Ut is one of the most famous images from the entire Vietnam war era. It illustrates the importance of what was and was not shown to the populous. The image of crying, naked children running under a story of an accidental napalm bombing of a civilian center by the home side was devastating for the war's reputation in America.
As early as 1965, when the first combat troops landed in Vietnam, a schism started growing between official information from the White House and unofficial information from the media and visual reporting. By 1967 and 1968, attitudes towards the war were increasingly and overwhelmingly negative. Why? Because, for the first time, those left at home were not just imagining what was happening at war. They were watching it in their living rooms.
What the Public Wasn't Supposed to Know
And What TV Told Us Anyways
Not only was the Vietnam War TV's "first" war, but it was also a different type of war unfamiliar to America thus far. The terrain and fighting styles were all different and deadly. And it all played out on America's stage. All the following (and many more) affected the impact at home:
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The difficult and slowgoing combat.
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The environment: jungles, agricultural areas, and villages; the lack of organized warfare that WWII veterans were accustomed to.
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White House messages and promises constantly conflicted with the actual actions taking place in Vietnam.
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Civilian deaths of the Vietnamese.
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The original caption for this photograph reads: Operation "Oregon," a search and destroy mission conducted by an infantry platoon of Troop B, 1st Reconnaissance Squadron, 9th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), three kilometers west of Duc Pho, Quang Ngai Province. An infantryman is lowered into a tunnel by members of the reconnaissance platoon. 1967.
National Archives Identifier: 66956851
Soldiers Carry a Wounded Comrade Through a Swampy Area; 1969
National Archives Identifier: 531457
Why It Matters
"Rather than affecting policy through the manipulation of public opinion, television may direct affect the government’s position by playing on the policymaker’s fear that television will affect opinion."
"Television and the Vietnam War," Michael Mitchell
Television did have a big impact on public opinion, but it also guided policy. The government had lost its grandeur from earlier decades and was instead regarded with distrustful, disillusioned eyes. The White House now had to content with mass visual reporting and carefully monitor public opinion that had for so long considered their government superior.
Seeing What They Saw
"The American people have a right to expect their government, their military, and, yes, their press to provide honest information. But the answers regarding right or wrong, the worthiness and the effectiveness of the sacrifice of blood and treasure, rests, ultimately, with a wary, skeptical citizenry."
The Media and the Vietnam War, Clarence Wyatt.
The previous images and the following images are examples of visual facts that newscasters and newspapers would release for their daily 'snapshot' of Vietnam. They speak for themselves in how they disillusioned America during the 1960s.
GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING: As the page descends, the content gets more violent and/or disturbing. Please keep this in mind when viewing.
Transporting the Wounded, 1968
Photograph: AP Archive
Text: Vietnam: The Real War-in pictures, The Guardian
Marines transport their seriously wounded atop a US army tank through the streets of Hue toward a helicopter evacuation point on 17 February 1968. Tanks were the only vehicles able to travel the streets because of rubble from buildings destroyed during the still-ongoing Tet offensive. The marines came under sniper fire several times on the journey.
Paratroopers carry wounded into a medic helicopter, 1965
Photograph: AP Images
Found in: Vietnam Media, Brittanica.com
'Reaching Out' by Larry Burrows, 1966
Picture: The Life Pictures Collection
Text: The Vietnam War Pictures that Moved Them Most, Time.com
Russell Burrows, son of photographer Larry Burrows: The fraction of a second captured in most photographs is just that: a snapshot of a moment in time. Sometimes, even in war, that moment can tell a whole story with clarity, but it can be ambiguous too.
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The photograph that ran in LIFE in late October 1966 of Gunnery Sergeant Jeremiah Purdie, bleeding and bandaged, helped down a muddy hill by fellow marines, didn’t really need a caption...
[speaking of the written account around the picture] The detail not given was that Gunny Purdie’s commanding officer had just been killed on that hill, the radio operator “cut in half.” Neither did the article mention that the CO had called in artillery fire on his own position. Purdie was being restrained from turning back to aid his CO.
The Saigon Execution, 1968
Photograph: Eddie Adams/AP
Text: Vietnam: The Real War-in pictures, The Guardian
Gen Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnamese chief of the national police, fires his pistol into the head of suspected Vietcong official Nguyen Van Lem on a Saigon street early on in the Tet offensive, on 1 February 1968.
Photographer Eddie Adams reported that after the shooting, Loan approached him and said: “They killed many of my people, and yours too,” then walked away. This photograph received the 1969 Pulitzer prize for spot news photography
Battle of An Ninh, 1965
Photograph: Henri Huet/AP
Text: Vietnam: The Real War-in pictures, The Guardian
Bodies of US paratroopers lie near a command post during the battle of An Ninh, 18 September 1965. The paratroopers, of the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, were hit by heavy fire from guerrillas that began as soon as the first elements of the unit landed. The dead and wounded were later evacuated to An Khe, where the 101st was based. The battle was one of the first of the war between major units of US forces and the Vietcong.
North Vietnamese Casualties, 1967
Photograph: Henri Huet/AP
Text: AP Images
This aerial view from a helicopter shows a field littered with bodies of dead North Vietnamese soldiers dragged with ropes to a central area for mass burial after a battle in February 21, 1967 during the Vietnam War. Korean Marines claimed they killed 243 of the enemy.
Michelin Rubber Plantation, 1965
Photograph: Horst Faas/AP
Text: Vietnam: The Real War-in pictures, The Guardian
A South Vietnamese stretcher-bearer wears a face mask to protect himself from the smell as he passes the bodies of US and South Vietnamese soldiers killed fighting the Vietcong in the Michelin rubber plantation, 27 November 1965. More than 100 bodies were recovered after the Vietcong overran South Vietnam’s 7th Regiment, 5th Division, killing most of the regiment and several US advisers. The plantation, situated midway between Saigon and the Cambodian border, was the scene of frequent fighting throughout the war.
