This post is 4th in a series analyzing the press’ role in politics and the opinions of the populace. We’ve noted the statements of certain philosophers of Western Civilization on the role they feel the press and propaganda should play in good governance. We talked about the technical advances in communication and the relatively small number of people who exert a large amount of influence on public opinion. We pointed out the research that’s been done on the ability of the press to manipulate thought in a society and it’s use in advertising. We noted the use of propaganda in the 1970s to highlight certain events and downplay others.
If you haven’t read the related posts and would like to
The Vietnam War marked a huge shift in the relationship between the press and the US government. More Americans had televisions in their homes and imagery, film footage, became a potent way to affect the mass psyche. Rather than read the news, people began to get their news in segments of 5 minutes or less.
From 1954 until the UN brokered cease fire agreement and the end of the First Indochina War in1965, the United States assisted the South Vietnamese in their struggle against the Viet Minh and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). The US sent military advisors and supplies. The UN cease fire didn’t stop the North and their allied Southern guerillas from trying to defeat the South Vietnamese government..
The South Vietnamese government was portrayed as corrupt and inefficient by the press corps. The press also became critical of battlefield losses by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).
From the early stages of the war and until its end, the South Vietnamese people were regularly viewed by the media with condescension, contempt, and disdain. The media exhibited the “Cold War myopia, ethnocentrism, cultural bias, and racism embedded in American ideology” Wikipedia
The press coverage of this period influenced the minds of US citizens. The Cold War was in full swing. People did not want to see the democratic government of South Vietnam fall to the communists.
A January 1965 Gallup poll indicated that two out of three Americans agreed that the country would never form a stable government and that four out of five Americans felt that the communists were winning. Few, however, wanted a unilateral US withdrawal and 50 percent believed that the US was obliged to defend independent nations from communist aggression. Wikipedia
In 1965 the US began it’s military escalation in Vietnam, sending combat units and taking on a counter insurgency role alongside the ARVN. The US draft also began; making this conflict of great interest to all citizens.
The US press revealed itself at odds with the US government Public Affairs Office. During Operation Starlight, a huge US military success that routed a VC regiment, a supply convoy was ambushed. The press focused on this event. The military denied the ambush had taken place causing frustration in the press. Some press members had risked their lives to save crew members from the convoy.
The Tet Offensive (1968) was an attempt by communist forces to start a popular uprising in South Vietnam against the Americans and the South Vietnamese government. Infiltrators launched assaults across South Vietnam on the Vietnamese New Year holiday. Instantly the whole nation was covered with battles in cities and around military bases.
The US and ARVN forces successfully stopped the Tet Offensive, inflicting 50,000 casualties on the Viet Cong and NVA troops involved. The communist forces were unable to carry out significant operations for years after. The hoped for uprising against the South Vietnamese government did not materialize. This was a solid US and ARVN victory.
The press focused on the US military’s reports of their successes in the theater of conflict prior to the assault. When the Tet Offensive happened no one thought the communists were capable of such a large scale operation. This press focus caused public support for the war to wane and distrust of the military’s press conferences to increase.
The most famous image of the Tet Offensive (taken by Eddie Adams) was of a Viet Cong member being executed by the Southern Vietnamese Police General, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. This image had an incredible affect on the US conscience and helped rally the anti war effort.
Although it was a US victory, the Tet Offensive undermined support for US involvement in South Vietnam. The slow drawdown of US forces began.
A study authorized by the Trilateral Commission in 1975 to examine the “governability” of American democracy found that “the most notable new source of national power in 1970, as compared to 1950, was the national media”, suggesting also that there was “considerable evidence to suggest that the development of television journalism contributed to the undermining of governmental authority”. Although this report was commissioned on the heels of the messy conflict of the war itself, the sentiment that the development of new journalistic media such as television supplanted governmental authority in attaining the support of the American public during the Vietnam War has been accepted and upheld by many scholars through to the present day. Wikipedia
When Nixon became president he sharply limited the press’s access to information within Vietnam itself. He wanted the media to reduce the American public’s interest in and knowledge of the war in Vietnam. The relationship between the press and the government had been fundamentally altered.
Now think back to Noam Chomsky’s comparison of press coverage between the Cambodian Purge and the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. These events occurred immediately after the US final withdrawal from Vietnam. The press covered the Khmer Rouge killings in great detail. The press almost ignored, and whitewashed, the killings in East Timor. Chomsky’s points are detailed in this post.