Media Effects of the Vietnam War
War is truly a horrific event that unfortunately occurs in our world frequently. There are a variety of ethical questions surrounding war, such as how much should citizens know about the fighting? When it comes to reporting the news, it is the goal of the network to report the news first. The benefit to this is people will turn to them first when it comes to breaking stories. However if the news is delivered based on speed and not accuracy this can be harmful to society. War is a very serious event and should not be taken lightly. Therefore, reporters must make sure facts are correct and unbiased. In both the Vietnam War and our current war we see reporters going to extreme measures to be the first to report information that may have been inaccurate.
There was certainly not a lack of information to report when it came to the Vietnam War. Unfortunately some of this information was highly inaccurate. Such as the event that started the war. The battle of Tonkin was proved to have been false as reported by a Japanese Newswire in July 1984. In the bay it was reported outside Vietnam that the North Vietnamese had sunk a US ship killing just two soldiers. The American people heard this and became outraged, and the congress gave President Lyndon B. Johnson a blank check to run the war. It was later discovered the tragedy never even occurred. The news networks reported this event and the American Government confirmed the false event and the war began, as the newswire reports. If this lie was never reported chances are the war would have never started. An Asian news source reported the Gulf of Tonkin as an illusion from the start (Japanese Newswire, Lexis Nexis), this proved to be true but what Americans at the time period would believe the Asian News Networks. This can easily be related to the current war in Iraq. In order to get the war underway the administration made claims of weapons of mass destruction that could potentially harm us. If American media was not allowed into these war situations the government could simply make up another lie and point out old weapons found in Iraq and there would be no proof of proving these weapons old.
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."
Government had a hard time keeping up with censoring what any American could potentially see when they tuned into the evening news. With the fast-paced increase in television sets in American homes, came a lack of adequate government control. The multitude of graphic images and videos from Vietnam that were being broadcasted in the living rooms of so many families is what made the Vietnam war the “Living-Room War.” Hundreds of thousands of NBC viewers watched Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan shoot his captive in a Saigon street. It was violence like this that heavily impacted America’s feelings toward the war. “Vietnam was a journalistic milestone: according to Daniel C. Hallin … it was the first war in which reporters were routinely accredited to accompany military forces, yet not subject to censorship”(Blumenthal Web). This lack of censorship is what caused America to see the truth of the vietnam
it does not tell us the impact of the television address, so we do not
The Vietnam War began in the year 1954, after the ascension to power of Ho Chi Minh, who was a communist leader in North Vietnam. The leader was spreading communism, and because the United States wanted to stop the spread, it sent military troops to aid South Vietnamese to stop this vice. The war saw about 3million people die with the inclusion of 58,000 American soldiers. About 150,000 people were wounded during the war. In 1975, South Vietnamese government surrendered the war after the communist forces forced them to surrender. Vietnam unified communism and became a Socialist Republic. Although decades have passed since the occurrence of the Vietnam war, the American culture, which was partly born as a result of this war, is celebrated today.
During his testimony to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, John Kerry mentioned that in his opinion, “there is nothing in South Vietnam which could have happened that realistically threatens the United States of America.” In that same testimony, Kerry discussed that most people “did not even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart.” The Fulbright hearings were an eye-opener to the millions of Americans who watched them. They convinced many that opposing the war and patriotism were compatible. The movement against the Vietnam War could be said as one of the greatest triumphs in democracy. The war’s purpose was to instill democracy, yet the war was waged with a lack of a constitutional warrant. What started as a few people protesting turned into the majority being opposed to the Vietnam War. The movement involved only a few dozen organizations in 1960, and overtime produced twelve hundred antiwar organizations a decade later. The antiwar movement was spurred by trends and perspectives on the war changing from 1965 to 1973, and contributing events such as the Mai Lai massacre and the Tet Offensive. The impact of the antiwar movement was clearly substantial, by the time the war had ended; the last Gallup poll recorded in May 1971 indicated that public approval of the war was at an all-time low of 28 percent. The movement provoked doubts about the war’s merits among the American public and elites, including in congress and the media, who, in turn influenced other Americans. The threat the movement posed to domestic social stability also promoted public and elite ...
Vietnam’s involvement in the Vietnam War impacted Vietnam in various significant ways. The Vietnam War was a very crucial war in Vietnamese history and changed Vietnamese society. The war was enduring and lasted for twenty-one years. It began in 1954 and ended in 1975. The war commenced due to disagreement of communism in Vietnam. The war was between North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and The United States. North Vietnam supported and encouraged communism in Vietnam. On the other hand, South Vietnam and The Untied States opposed communism and tried to prevent communism from spreading throughout the country. This eventually led to the chaotic Vietnam War. The war gained national attention and created pandemonium worldwide. The war impacted Vietnam in major ways and also impacted vital factors such as health, life in Vietnam, and economy. The leaders of North and South Vietnam also impacted all the involvement that took place in the war. The Vietnam War changed Vietnam greatly. The war left Vietnam in shambles and the war was also a calamity.
The United State's involvement in the Vietnam War is the most concealed and despised in the 20 century. Not only was it unnecessary, but it caused many problems that would have otherwise been nonexistent if we had stayed out of it. We see what it has done today; America is still paying back the debt it caused, people still distrust their government because of how they tried to hide it, and we see veterans that are homeless around every corner. Even I have seen first hand what the war did to people. A great man was ruined by a war; A war that nearly destroyed a country.
Minimizing harm done by journalism in times of war is a difficult task. Naturally, there are bits of information that the government needs to keep secret for one reason or another. There is also the danger of victims' stories being exploited and sensationalized. The SPJ's Code of Ethics recommends that journalists should "treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings worthy of respect" (Society). During the extreme...
The 1960’s was time in modern history that saw dramatic cultural changes throughout the world. Events revolving the advances of socialist left-wing governments and the American military presence in Vietnam, would catalyze the organization of student protesters not only in the United States, but also in countries like Germany. Although many student movements were unique to their countries, they all managed to create a lasting impact on their societies.
While clips of brave Americans fighting in the Vietnam War were constantly being televised and politicians tried to swindle Americans into believing that the United States’ involvement in Vietnam was for a just cause, the press and media often showed the negative effects of US involvement in Vietnam through death counts. In fact, many historians feel that the total death count was around 850,000 (Siegel et. al.). Every
The war that challenged communism and took nearly 3 million lives, Vietnam. The 20 year long War started on November of 1955 and ended on April of 1975. This particular war first started when the Viet Cong government and the North Vietnamese were fighting to restore Vietnam. Not wanting communism to spread the United States got involved when the French requested them for help. The day the U.S. decided to help the Vietnamese is the day that it started costing them and until this day it's costing them.(Hardcastle,2005)
In Vietnam, friendly fire was common. The United States soldiers often shot innocent civilians. When the U.S viewed the brutality of the war and the torture of countless Vietnamese citizens through journalism, the President knew the public’s reaction was to such a point that he would never get re-elected, therefore he didn’t run, and his party lost the election.
The year is 2006,watching TV, you flip through the various news stations to learn about the recent news in Iraq, the majority of the news simply says that ‘x’ amount of soldiers or marines were killed in such and such attack. You don’t like what you are hearing so you go online to read an independent embedded (embedded refers to news reporters who are attached to military units) reporters story. Online you read that two new schools were built, and the Iraqis, supported by US forces, led an attack to capture an insurgent leader. The big media corporations such as FOX, NBC, CNN, and many others distort the facts that are on the ground. The small, mostly independent, reporters generally try to get a first-hand account of the situation on the ground. They are their alongside the soldiers, sailors, and marines. In some cases these reporters may need to drop their camera or pen and defend themselves. These examples bring many questions that I want to know. The biggest of these questions is how do these different types of reporting, the “main stream media”, and the small independent embedded reporters affect the views that the American people have back home? The reason I chose this topic is that after reading The Good Soldiers and Moment of Truth in Iraq, I was intrigued in the considerable difference between what was wrote in books and what CNN reported on the nightly news. I did not find a ‘good’ answer I could find to answer my question, however I did draw three conclusions. The conclusions are as follows: the ‘big media’ misconstrues the information from the battlefield to fit their own agendas; the media fails to obtain a personal more in depth view and instead report after the smoke has cleared instead of what happened during t...
In times of War, the media plays a crucial role both in reporting, monitoring and giving updates. During the Vietnam War of 1955-1975, the American press played crucial roles of reporting until it ended up shifting its tone under the influence of occurrence of some events like the Tet Offensive, the My Lai Massacre, the bombing of Cambodia and leaking of Pentagon papers resulting into lack of trust in the press (Knightly 1975). From the beginning of the war up to present times there have been undying debates over the role of media in the war. The have been various criticisms over the American News Media’s actions and influences on the outcome of the war. The debate is embedded on the particular political assumptions perceived across the American political spectrum. Those criticizing the media for its role are of the opinion that the media misunderstood the United States military effort hence hindering succession of the American will in a war which was to be won.
In this era of globalization, news reporting is no longer just a means of communications, but it has also developed into a tool for change. Prominent journalists like Julian Assange, Nick Davies, Sir Charles Wheeler and many more has changed the landscape and outcomes of information, war and news reporting itself. But Martin Bell has challenged the fundamentals of journalism that is to be balanced and impartial with what he calls ‘Journalism of Attachment’. He even coined the phrase, ‘bystanders’ journalism’ for continuing the tradition of being distant and detached (Bell 1997), which he criticizes “for focusing with the circumstances of violence, such as military formations, weapons, strategies, maneuvers and tactics” (Gilboa 2009, p. 99). Therefore it is the aim of this essay to explain whether it is ethical for reporters to practice what Martin Bell calls the Journalism of Attachment by evaluating its major points and its counterarguments, and assessing other notions of journalism such as peace journalism.