Vietnam Role of Media

Evolution of the media
1. During the Vietnam war, in America many Americans used television
2. Television, therefore, became the most important source of news for American people during the Vietnam war.
3. New technology such as new recording items such as video cameras and audio recorder became more common.
  1. Therefore, journalists and reporters were now able to take much more photographs and record video materials
4. The US Goverment struggled to hide everything that was happening in Vietnam from the public and media.
  1. With a lack of government controls, the media was now able to publish uncensored pictures and videos showing the brutality of the war in Vietnam and this influenced the America public opinion vastly.
Begining of the war
1. At the beginning of the war, the press had little interest in Vietnam.
2. However, at the end of 1960, the death of many civilians in a coup against President Diem started to change their views on Vietnam. Soon after, the New York Times sent their first reporter to Saigon following by journalists from Reuters, Agency France Press, Times and so on.
3. In order to deal with the large number of press corps, the US had to apply a more effective method to keep those correspondents in line.
The Tet Offensive and After
1. In late January 1968, the Tet Offensive occurred and marked a major turning point in media’s coverage of the war.
  1. As a result, the public misled by the media viewed the offensive as a triumph for the communists and quickly changed their opinions against the war.
2. Based on the media reports from Vietnam, much of the American public concluded that the Tet offensive was a defeat. They thought that it meant the end of the war was near. The Tet offensive had demonstrated that more American soilders could die and they could lose even more money even if America could establish a separate southern regime. This lead to more people wanting the Americans out of Vietnam
3. After the Tet Offensive, media coverage of the war became predominantly negative. Images of both civilian and military casualties were increasingly televised.
  1. Additionally, many iconic pictures of the war such as The Execution of a Vietcong Guerilla or The Napalm Girl exerted a negative and lasting influence on the public feeling.
What The media showed
1. Vietnam was the first war covered in depth on the nightly news. The film coverage showed the realities of warfare: wounded civilians, children who had lost their parents, villages destroyed, American GIs with various gruesome wounds from land mines and artillery fire.
  1. Photos by Media

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Vietnam Role of Media

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	Created by Megan Booth about 10 years ago