Media Influence On Vietnam War

Barely a decade after the United States withdrew troops from their fight against communism in Korea, Americans would find themselves on the hook for another draft to prevent South Vietnam from falling to the communist menace. President Johnson convinced Congress to authorize a U.S. intervention after the North Vietnamese fired on a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2, 1964. Within a year, U.S. combat troops arrived in Vietnam and would remain in country for another eight years. In that time, over 2.5 million U.S. troops would serve in Vietnam; 58,220 would return home in coffins. Another 2,646 would be listed as prisoners of war or missing in action upon America’s withdrawal; as of April 14, 2016, 1,621 remain unaccounted for. While these numbers are depressing, this paper will focus on the two million who made it home and how they were treated when they arrived. Unlike previous veterans, there were no parades, no fanfares, no love for the

They argue the media created a stereotype of a soldier’s life to further military and political goals. Once home, soldiers were “confused and annoyed to have seen his family and friends did not understand what he had experienced and how he had changed.” Since the public learned about the war through the media, they only believed what they saw and heard, which was not always what soldiers were experiencing. The author’s father remembers being like the public in his understanding of the war and those fighting it before leaving for Vietnam; it was only after he came back that he realized the American people were callus and ambivalent towards soldiers, particularly when he saw how readily they accepted the daily death tolls. Based on their research, the authors concluded the media set their own agenda on the war and made a point to emphasize the aspects they found most important to shape how people accepted and understood the Vietnam