I. America's Longest War
U.S. involvement in Vietnam was initiated in the early 1950's by President Truman with the sending of military aid to the French Colony in hopes to stop Vietnam from fallowing China into communism. Ensuing the breakup of Vietnam into a northern communist and a southern democratic nation American involvement continued with President Eisenhower dispatching adviser to South Vietnam, President Kennedy increasing the number of advisers, and then by President Johnson committing the first American troops to Indochina. Events escalated in 1964 in response to U.S. destroyers receiving fire which prompted a retaliatory strike that destroyed twenty-five boats and an oil depot. President Johnson then ordered offensive bombing raids and sent in the first ground troops, reaching 175,000 by the end of 1965. Determined to win, Johnson escalated the war effort by sending in more troops exceeding 500,000 by 1967. By the end of the war more than 58,000 Americans had been killed compared to the 1 to 3 million Southeast Asian casualties.
II. The Most Powerful Medium in History
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| Televisions brought the reality of the battlefied. |
Despite television having existed during the Korean War, it hadn’t yet become a major news medium. By mid 1960's more people were receiving their news from TV as appose to newspapers. By 1972 two out of three people had made television their primary news source. During the peak of the war in Vietnam, ABC, CBS, and NBC had a combined audience of 35 million per night. Television and newspaper correspondents were free to go whoever they wanted and report whatever they found, the first and only American war without military censorship. This lack of sensor chip allowed the real war to be directly portrayed to the American audience home viewers. Technological advances greatly improved the potential of television news, new lightweight cameras and communication satellites allowed film from the war front to become a regular part of the daily news coverage. Additional advances also included colored media, meaning that blood was no longer shown in black and white and that blood "could be seen in all its horrific brilliance."
III. Exposing the Horrors of War
TV allowed people back at home to define the reality of war not in words but visually; as blood. In 1967 NBC's Greg Harris joined a platoon and reported that "In the first twenty-six days of the present operation, this particular unit killed 270 VC while only suffering 3 wounded Americans." While reporting film showed U.S. soldiers charging boldly into a village with bayonets drawn. As Harris continued with the news report footage showed huts burning with bodies dead and alive, mangled, and being pulled out of holes and huts by their hair and extremities. This was not the only news report like this; in fact reports such as Hariss' aired everyday until the war finally came to a halt. Despite horrible images of dead and wounded soldiers and civilians appearing everywhere in the news, the most sought after film was of bloody American GIs.
Problems began to arise over the need for new first hand media coverage of the war. The most controversial cover was by Morley Safer of CBC where he had covered U.S. Soldiers burning down every hut in the village to the ground. The marines could be seen warning the Vietnamese peasants to run but also showed the warning were useless because they clearly didn’t speak English. The most distinctive detail of the video was the equipment the marines used to ignite the roofs: Zippo cigarette lighters. When the filmed arrived in new the story began with a reciting of the facts, "The day's operation burned down 150 houses, wounded three women, killed one baby, and netted these four prisoners." The negative view of the Vietnam War portrayed in the media back lashed, resulting in an outraged President Johnson commenting to the president of CBS News, "Frank, are you trying to fuck me? Your boys just shat on the American Flag."
Morly Safer Interview on Cam Ne
V. Tets Stuns a Nation
VI. The Shot Felt 'Round the World
General Nguyen Ngoc street execution of North Vietnamese Soldier
VII. Exposing the War as Unwinnable
VIII. Antiwar Protesters Fight for the Spotlight
IX. Television News Helps End a War
V. Tets Stuns a Nation
In late January of 1969 the North Vietnamese orchestrated the Tet Offensive. This all out attack plan included simultaneous assaults on more than 100 sites, practically every city, town, and military base in South Vietnam. The ground taken by the north was eventually reclaimed by the South and American forces, but received serious repercussions. The American public believed which believed the success in Vietnam was imminent was now shocked. The Tet Offensive also seriously damaged the Johnson administration in the eyes of the public and as a result America suddenly became impatient with the ongoing war. The U.s Embassy was the primary focus of coverage, spanning 3 days of ongoing live gun battle. "In the midst of the crisis, networks initially reported incomplete inaccurate information. ABC, CBS, and NBC all continued to portray Tet as a Viet Cong victory even after the fog had lifted and the Americans were providing undisputable evidence that the offensive had failed."
VI. The Shot Felt 'Round the World
More than any other televised imagine that burnt the brutality of war into the mind of American People was the filmed execution of a Vietnamese man directly after the Tet offensive. For the first time in the history of the world was there a televised death, a man shot at gunpoint by a South Vietnamese general in the head spraying blood everywhere. The full color images of the street corner execution made history, jumping NBC's audience that night from 15 million to a shocking 20 million. Viewers were horrified; the film had impacted attitudes of the American public more than expected. The film was labeled grotesque, confirming to the American people that this was a wrong war.
VII. Exposing the War as Unwinnable
Streitmatter, the author of Mightier than the Sword, states that the man who set the tone for television coverage after the Tet Offensive was Walter Cronkite. "With his kind and gentle manner, had shepherded the nation through many momentous events including the 1963 Kennedy assassination. Utterly surprised by the Tet Offensive, Cronkite felt obligated, his duty, to his viewers to find out what actually was going on in Vietnam. By the third week of the offensive, Cronkite was interviewing soldiers and visiting battle sites. Two weeks after that, pools identified him as the most trusted man in America. Through his journalistic appearance in South Vietnam Cronkite explained to Americans that neither side had won by k.o'd and that "the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate." In the first time in history America was unable to win a foreign war. Cronkite was such a monumental figure of the time that when he had finished making these statements on evening news, President Johnson said sadly, "if I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the war." Within six weeks after the Tet Offensive, one in five Americans switched from supporting the War to opposing it.
Protests started as soon as the first troops were sent to Indochina, and were quickly picked up by TV news accommodated and helped the protesters succeed in grabbing the media spotlight. In response, the military brass began to refer to CBS as the Communist Broadcasting System. By 1968 the antiwar movement shifted fallowing the Tet Offensive and Cronkite's pessimistic view of the war made journalists more skeptical of government policies. Police brutally clubbing protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, in front of TV cameras, made journalists even less critical of the dissidents. Never before had so many demonstrated their hope for peace. Six months later in response to President Nixon’s refusal to send more troops into Vietnam and instead sent them Cambodia, caused protests to explode. In 1970, National Guardsmen opened fire on the Kent State University campus in Ohio, killing four students and transforming 1.5 million more students into angry war protestors.
The process of television turning American people against the war began in the mid 1960's when the blood of dead and wounded American GIs, as well as Vietnamese soldiers and civilians began to appear in televisions nationwide. Regardless of what politicians and military brass were saying, America was not winning the war. America realized as did Walter Cronkite, that perhaps the crowds of the younger people who had been protesting the war actually may have had a point after all. People were finally willing to say out loud that they’d been supporting a hideous and inhuman war for too long, and that they refused to continue.
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