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How does the media influence public perceptions
Effects of media on public perception of politics
Effects of media on public perception of politics
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Television, ads, music, and all other forms of media drastically affect the views and beliefs of the American people, even today. However, what happens in a time of war? What happens to the American morale and view on war when the American people are receiving the worst news through the media? During The Vietnam War, almost every household in the country had a way of receiving the news, usually through the means of a television screen; however, as the Vietnam War progressed, most of the news the American people received was bad news they did not want to hear. For starters, at the beginning of the war, the war was not really described in media; however, as the war quickly progressed, journalists were sent to Vietnam in large numbers. Furthermore, …show more content…
However, after mass civilian death in Vietnam under President Diem and a huge wave of patriotism in the United States, journalists began being sent to Vietnam in large numbers. According to Vietnam War Info’s article “Media Role in The Vietnam War, after the New York Times sent their first reporter over to Saigon, reporters from other places followed such as Reuters and Agency France Press. The journalists being sent over to Vietnam were at first encouraged to capture images and report on the war; therefore, news agencies began sending mass numbers of reporters as the war continued. Due to the American government’s encouragement of the media’s involvement, there were little restrictions on what the media could report or where they had to be. In fact, according to Ronald Spector’s article, “The Vietnam War and The Media”, the U.S. Military Assistance Command made military transportation available to reporters and some were even placed on the fields of battles to gather first-hand accounts. However, being close to the battle cites posed obvious risks for journalists, and Spector went on to discuss that more than 60 journalists were actually killed during the war. All in all, at the beginning of the war, the American people were highly interested in the news media and the reporters were just as …show more content…
Once the news started reporting more and more death and destruction, the U.S. government started to regret their little restrictions and encouragement they had given reporters. In fact, the Vietnam War Info’s article discussed that due to the inadequate restrictions given by the government, the media began publishing uncensored reports that started to shape the public opinion. Basically, the reports and images that were being shown in almost every American household shown a negative light on the war and only really portrayed the bad news. Furthermore, Vietnam War Info also described that the Tet Offensive completely changed the media’s coverage of the war to that of a mainly negative viewpoint. Vietnam War Info went on to explain that even though the Tet Offensive was a military victory for the U.S. the news only discussed the casualties and twisted the story into a failure, which changed the American’s view. As the brutality brought to the American public’s view increased, the public’s view on the war began to shift into an anti-war
Beginning in the early 1960's American journalists began taking a hard look at America's involvement in South Vietnam. This inevitably led to a conflict with the American and South Vietnamese governments, some fellow journalists, and their parent news organizations. This was the last hurrah of print journalism, as television began to grow in stature. William Prochnau's, Once Upon A Distant War, carefully details the struggles of these hardy journalists, led by David Halberstram, Malcolm Browne, and Neil Sheehan. The book contains stories, told in layers, chronicling America's growing involvement in South Vietnam from 1961 through 1963.
The media in 1964 helped fuel the lies by publishing headlines such as " American Planes Hit North Vietnam after 2nd attack on our Destroyers", "Move taken to Halt New Aggression". The Los Angeles Times even reported that the Vietnamese "themselves escalated the hostilities". The incorrect news reports were reported to have all come from "almost exclusive reliance on government officials as sources of information.
The Vietnam War was the most publicized war during its era; moreover this was the most unpopular war to hit the United States. All over the country riots began to raise, anti-war movement spread all over the states begging to stop the war and chaos overseas. This truly was a failure in the political side of things. For the public, all they saw was a failed attempt in a far away country. Events such as the Tet Offensive where the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong established an all out attack on key locations around Vietnam, and although the Viet Cong was virtually wiped out, this still had a large affect psychologically on the troops as well as the populist back in the United States. Another atrocity that occurred during this war was the My Lai Massacre. This was the mass murder on unarmed civilians in South Vietnam during March 16,1968. Around November 1969, the world saw this and was outraged with the killings of innocent civilians prompting and giving the public more reasons to stop the war. Although the war was very unpopular, men and women were still fighting and dying for America. Heroes such as Captain John W, Ripley of Dong Ha, Medal of Honor recipients, and overall troops that gave the ultimate sacrifice were forgotten for a brief period. As unpopular as the war was, the American people should still know the stories and good that some of these troops had done for the United States.
Vietnam was a highly debated war among citizens of the United States. This war was like no other with regards to how it affected people on the home front. In past war’s, the population of the United States mainly supported the war and admired soldiers for their courage. During the Vietnam War, citizens of the U.S. had a contradictory view than in the past. This dilemma of not having the support of the people originates from the culture and the time period.
The Vietnam War certainly left a distaste in the lives of many who have been affected by the war; scholars have become increasingly interested in the interaction between war and public opinion. There have been many scholarly works published on the Vietnam War, but the issue that will be analyzed here is how public opinion changed the course of the war. The first article by Scott Gartner and Gary Segura is titled, “Race, Casualties, and Opinion in the Vietnam War,” it examined how the diverse races within America in combination with the atrocities in the war led to the formation of opinions that were similar in one race but were different in another race. The second article by Paul Burstein and William Freudenburg titled, “The Impact of Public Opinion, Antiwar Demonstrations, and War Costs on Senate Voting on Vietnam War Motions” takes a closer look on how as the war became a prolonged affair, representatives from both the Senate and the House became more influenced about the angst from their constituents regarding the war. The third article by Sidney Verba and Richard Brody is titled, “Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam,” which takes a similar approach to the first article but asks, how do the informed differ from the less-well-informed on their attitudes toward the Vietnam War? If demonstrations were credited with bringing about these changes, presumably an argument could be made that demonstrations had converted public opinion which in turn encouraged the administration to change its Vietnam policies. That is the focus of fourth and final article by E. M. Schreiber titled, “Anti-War Demonstrations and American Public Opinion on the War in Vietnam.” Central to all of these articles is how individuals consider casualties when d...
The political and societal ramifications of Vietnam's Tet Offensive indubitably illustrate the historical oddity of 1968. 1967 had not been a bad year for most Americans. Four years after the profound panic evoked by the assassination of John Kennedy, the general public seemed to be gaining a restored optimism, and even the regularly protested Vietnam War still possessed the semblance of success (Farber and Bailey 34-54). However, three short weeks following the eve of 68, Americans abruptly obtained a radically different outlook. The Tet Offensive, beginning on January 30, 1968, consisted of a series of military incursions during the Vietnam War, coordinated between the National Liberation Front's People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF), or "Viet Cong," and the ...
After the Tet Offensive, more protests occurred demanding the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. The protestors used it as fuel and began expanding their ideas to the rest of the United States. Even Johnson’s opposing party saw it as his lack of leadership with the army. The media was able to shift the opinions of the people one way or another. With the new information from the Tet Offensive, most people switched to the side of the anti-war
The Effect of Mass Media on Americans during the Vietnam War When the war initially began, Dean Rusk, US Secretary of State, pointed out that: "This was the first struggle fought on television in everybody's living room every day... whether ordinary people can sustain a war effort under that kind of daily hammering is a very large question. " The us administration, unlike most governments at war, made no official attempt to censure the reporting in the Vietnam war. Every night on the colour television people not only in America but across the planet saw pictures of dead and wounded marines. Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America--not on the battlefields of Vietnam."
The radio has had a huge impact on bringing information to the public about war and other government issues. Advertising and broadcasting on the airwaves was a major step in bringing war propaganda to a level where people could be easily touched nationally. Broadcasting around the clock was being offered everywhere. Before there was television people relied on the radio as a way to be entertained, the means of finding out what was going on in the world, and much more. During the World War II time period, 90 percent of American families owned a radio, and it was a part of daily life. So it was an obvious means of spreading war propaganda. During this time period, propaganda was spread throughout the radio by means of news programs, public affairs broadcasts, as well as through Hollywood and the mainstream. The average person had not even graduated high school at the time, and the average reading level of the American was somewhat low. The radio made it possible for stories and news to be delivered to everyone in plain simple English. The radio served as a medium that provided a sense of national community. Although it took time, the radio eventually rallied people together to back up the American war effort.
detail the ways that war has been perceived and how this impacts the topics of war and
While it may be true that in times of war, the nation still has the capability to fuel its war efforts without doing anything to mitigate opposition, the Vietnam War has proven that with the presence of opposition, war efforts can easily collapse, regardless of whether or not the war is “right for America.” During the Vietnam War, American media outlets and journalists had the “ability to cover the Vietnam War without censorship,”
Soon after the Tet Offensive, citizens of the United States began having second opinions about concentrating our troops in Vietnam: “Within weeks [of the Tet attacks], many average Americans who previously were supporters had turned against the war” (Omicinski 2). A small cluster of Vietcong forces made their way into the compound of the United States embassy located in Saigon, proving to Americans that even though there were hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting in Vietnam, the U.S. had progressed only slightly (Dudley 131). The people were constantly being told that the conflict would soon end, however, increased need of military assistance had U.S. citizens questioning the veracity of our government. The phrase "credibility gap" surfaced to describe the growing public scepticism (Gerdes 14). This factor led to the government’s loss of support from most of the population. Ano...
“Photographs like the one that made the front page of the most newspapers in the world in 1972- a naked South Vietnamese child just sprayed by american napalm, running down a highway toward the cameras, her arms open, screaming with pain-- probably did more to increase the public revulsion against the war than a hundred hours of televised barbarities”(476)
The media played such an important role in the war. If it wasn't for the media, public opinion would not have changed and Riots and demonstrations would not have taken place. The media also helped pressurize President Johnson into not standing for re-elections. Which meant Nixon became the new president, who then removed all troops from Vietnam. So therefore I believe that the Media and the Tet offensive were two big factors which had a huge impact on the war.
say made a big enough impact that it made the War end how it did. The