Topic: Reporting the Vietnam War.
How did the US media reporting of the Vietnam out of context influence the American public
Session: May Subject: History
Title: How did the US media reporting of the Vietnam War out of context influence the American public?
Citations Used: MLA Fon1rnt Word Cou nt: 3657
Table of Contents
Cover Page 1
Table of Contents 2
Introduction 4
Body Paragraphs 4
Conclusion 15
Bibliography .................................u. 16
How did the US media reporting of the Vietnam War out of context influence th American public?
The Vietnam War is an extremely interesting war. The war, which began in 1955 and ended approximately 20 years later in 1975, was act1mlly a civil war. Intervention and aid was provided by the United States to South Vietnamese forces to help fight against the communist north Vietnamese forces. The media in the Vietnam War can be divided into different sub categories. There are the reporters in the field who would work tirelessly to get the latest information back to the US. The news agencies in the US would then interpret the infom1ation themselves and create the news that would be given to the US public, using the mediums of television, radio and newspaper. In previous wars, the US media had always been censored. For example, propaganda was used in the Second World War to help ensure public support. When the Vietnam War started, US media censorshi p was not imposed, putting the US media that was reporting in a foreign country under a great deal of responsibility that it had not previously possessed. This raises the question of how the US media took war events out of context, and how significant of an impact this had on the American people's perception of the war
The US media portrayed the Vietnam War as primarily an American war because it did not fully understand the context in which the Vietnam War was taking place due to two primary reasons. First, the South Vietnamese government did not have a public relations apparatus and were not
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really interested in opening themselves up to foreign media (Braestrup 27). Second, the m of the US media reporting from the field in Vietnam found themselves in a foreign countr where the local population spoke a different language, making it difficult to accurately co the South Vietnamese side of the war (Braestrup 28). As a result, the US reporters receive information about the South Vietnamese primarily from US advisors (Ramsey 56). Howe reality was that the South Vietnamese were fighting just as hard as their American allies. example, the US Department of Defense released casualty statistics for 1967 showing that the United States had lost 9,738 troops that year, the South Vietnamese forces had lost 12 (Braestrup 26). This shows us how the US media by not understanding the context in whi war . was taking place, gave the American and other readers of the US media the impressio the Vietnam War was an American war. The impact that this had is very significant. becau would affect their perception of the war. The American public would be less likely to see t as a war for South Vietnamese freedom. The focus of the American media also affected th
in other ways.
My investigation will focus on methods used by journalists and organisations when reporting Vietnam War. Some of the key resources that I am planning to use are books that journalists on the Vietnam War published after the war was over.
prior wars, censorship played an important role in the reporting by the US media because led to such reporting focusing on US victories rather than defeats, the Vietnam War becam of the first uncensored covered by the media in a long time, even the Korean war had its censorship (Mark). Having an uncensored press available to report on the Vietnam War al the US media to bring much more of its bias and prejudices into the topics on which they
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reporting. The US media's tendency to report on US military defeats in the Vietnam War rather than on their victories illustrates another manner in which the US media rep1ied on Vietnam War events out of context. A good example of this biased reporting by taking events out of
context can be seen during the famous Tet offensive in 1968 when the Vietcong launched a major offensive against the South Vietnamese. The offensive was repelled quite effectively, however, in the process four American planes were shot down. While the crashes and burning wreckages were widely broadcasted on American television creating a very vivid and lasting