Did the media have an important role in the Vietnam war?

Question

This is a question I have received for history that I'm not sure about. Please explain why they played an important role or not. Thank-you.

Answer 1

Absolutely! The media brought the horrors of this war into everyone's home on a daily basis. It was up close and personal. People could see how wrong that war was and how Americans and others suffered.

Answer 2

One reason it did seem to play a large role was that Vietnam was so far away physically from the USA and when your son or boyfriend or husband was over there, being able to see and hear about it was important, it wasn't like WW2 where we had come from Europe and we knew a bit about Europe. Vietnam was a very foreign culture and as you must know, the media writes what sells. I never trust the media anymore. People seem to make decisions based on what the media reports, they write what people want to hear and i do believe they are greatly controlled by the govt. When I was in college in the early 70's, The Smother's Brothers Show was on TV and they really pushed the edge of speaking against anything the government was doing, Now on Sat. Night Live, they do anything, but the Smothers Bros. were really riding the edge so that might give you some insight into the liberties of media now compared to then Also, TV had only been in homes about 20 years when the Vietnam war was on and I think people back then trusted the media more. ??? Also, the possible good part of media before Vietnam was children weren't viewing WW2 on TV screens in their homes, it is pretty ghastly for kids, just like kids watching 9-11, if we didn't have such quick media, it wouldn't be brought into their child world where they cannot really interpret it.

Answer 3

Yes, the media did play an important role in the Vietnam War. For our enemy that is. It wasn’t what the American people saw and heard back here at home that made the difference. It was what our enemy was seeing and hearing that made the difference. People like Jane Fonda and anti war protestor being shown and heard all over the world encouraged North Vietnam leaders not to give up because they knew the media would win the war for them. This cost many more American lives than was necessary.

Answer 4

Yes. Aside from all the other information you've gotten about the US media, you might want to look up the Bureau chief for either Time or Life in Saigon. I saw something on a documentary once concerning the program the North had of moving supporters south. Some of these people had been in South Vietnam since 1945, and some worked in influential positions. They didn't elaborate on this, but it struck me that a person who was VC in a position like that could be very influential, provided they were subtle enough to not be too obvious.

Answer 5

YES...i'm a navy vet of 10 yrs and a vietnam vet...and the media which reported actual events, also did harm to the servicemen over their...we would read the military newspapers and see a lot of negativeness from back home..some were even affraid to wear their uniforms when they got back...i didnt..i was proud i served and i still am...the media isnt doing much good even now..they figure their #1 job is to sell news..no matter who they step on..granted the anti-war riots didnt help..which the media realy expanded on...seemed the news aired during ww2 was all positive and the servicemen came home to parades and awards...now people hardly look at someone in uniform...

Answer 6

The media was not available like it is now. There were no embedded reporters and no TV cameras. With the exception of a few things we had on TV which was not as perfected as it is now, the newspapers and magazines were belatedly our major source of news. Radio was probably the most accurate if you had a good newscaster. Our world had not shrunk to the extent it has now. I had a pen pal in Sri Lanka in the 1970s. Mail delivery took 6 months. The news we received from the war in the 1960s was very outdated.

Answer 7

Add the Spanish-American War (newspapermen like William Randolf Hearst stirred the flames of war while the military was trying to learn what really happened to the Maine), Watergate, the Civil War (the best way for generals in the field to get reports of enemy troop movement was to read the paper, too many commanding generals and politicians were too free with the information they handed out to the press), presidential elections, the Gulf War, the current war in Iraq, and Hurricane Katrina to the list.

Answer 8

The Vietnam War was the first war in history whose outcome was decided by the Media. Not just by “the Media” in fact. The outcome of the Vietnam War was decided by TV reporting.

Since Roman Empire times, public opinion at home had been informed (or misinformed) about the progress of wars by reports from the battlefront. At first, those reports came only from the General commanding the army. By the Middle Ages, genuine “reporters” (such s Froissart for the Hundred Years War) began to write their versions of what had happened. By the time of the Crimean and American Civil Wars, newspapers had begun to send correspondents (and later on, photographers) to report on battlefront events. And by WW1 – but much more so by WW2 – movie cameramen and commentators had begun to report as well.

But for all those pre-Vietnam conflicts, the news and the pictures had come AFTER the event. And they had not come into people’s HOMES: to watch the newsreels, you had to go to a movie theater.

By the late 1960’s, however, over 70 million American homes had TV sets. And every evening, in every one of those homes, families would gather to watch the News ... and then their favorite prime time entertainment shows.

And suddenly, two technical innovations burst onto the TV scene that made all the difference in the world as to how the Vietnam War was being reported.

The first innovation was Videotape. Before Videotape, TV news reports were shot in 16mm film. It was an expensive, one-time medium. So expensive that cameras were set up carefully and deliberately for each shoot. Almost everything was posed. Re-enactment, not real life, was typical. But with Videotape, the cameras could keep rolling, because the film could be re-used over and over again. Suddenly, it was cheap and easy for cameramen to shoot was actually happening.

The second innovation was Satellite Transmission of broadcasts. Before that, film from Vietnam (or elsewhere) had to be couriered from the battlefront, onto an airplane, and then flown back to the USA (or Europe, or Australia) before it could be broadcast. So it was always at least a day late. But, even with the primitive communications satellites beginning to orbit Earth in the late 1960’s, it became possible to transmit filmed commentaries direct from Vietnam across to home countries around the planet.

These two technical innovations made all of the difference to the way that Vietnam was reported to home audiences in America, Australia and Europe. Now, every evening, the TV news in people’s living rooms carried graphic evidence of what was happening in Vietnam.

Soldiers and civilians really DO live in different worlds. I have lived in both, so I think that I know that. Soldiers – or at least most soldiers – become hardened to the cruelties and the sadness of war. But civilians don’t, and can’t, be expected to understand and accept the utterly different world, in which their soldier husbands, brothers or friends are existing. They are horrified when the abnormal world of the soldiers invades their living rooms and disturbs their normal world each evening on the TV News.

From TV, the civilians gain an insight into this different and dreadful world of war. Their view of that war-world may be influenced by the choices and commentaries of the TV reporters. In Vietnam, that was certainly so. By and large, the press was as anti-war as the generals were pro-war.

And, for America at least, TV decided the outcome of Vietnam. The civilian public in America – especially the post-WW2 generation – judged Vietnam based on what they saw and heard on the evening TV News, not on the official reports from the US military or the nation’s elected political leaders.

And that is how TV decided the outcome of the Vietnam War.

Answer 9

Very important. It was the first televised war and people could see the horrible things that were being done in their name.

Answer 10

Would like to know more about this too