Television and American opinion on the Vietnam War
This strategy did not please much of the American public, who, for the first time in history, were inundated with footage of air raids and ground units in combat. A growing anti-war movement became increasingly vocal as the war went on. Johnson had begun the war with the support of the American people and it had been largely successfully in retaining it through the end of 1967 due to military reports released that reinforced the idea that the US was making steady progress in its mission. It was the administration’s hope that such misinformation campaigns would tilt media coverage of the war in a more positive direction and thereby instill a more positive outlook on the conflict among the American public and it worked at first, but as open debate about the war became more common so did media coverage that cast the war effort in an increasingly negative light.
The declining opinion of Johnson held by the American public and even his own party members was made clear in the election of 1968 where he was forced to drop out due to declining support from his own party. Nixon won the election, and the tipping point came in late 1968, when the Tet Offensive was launched by communist forces against major urban centers in South Vietnam. Although the US military and South Vietnamese forces largely repelled the attack, the media reported the attacks as a major loss for the US and the idea that it was beginning to look more and more like the US couldn’t win in Vietnam became increasingly prevalent. In the aftermath of the Tet Offensive Walter Cronkite reported from Vietnam and blatantly expressed that it would be in the best interest of the American people and the US military to end the war as soon as feasible.
Nixon’s Vietnamization
In the aftermath of Tet media coverage of the war continued to grow bleaker and bleaker. This is illustrated no better than in the media’s coverage of the My Lain Massacre which involved the killing of at least 300 civilians and inflamed anti-war protesters both in the US and abroad. But the My Lain Massacre and the media’s coverage of it was just a component of a larger motion toward the American public’s disillusionment with the situation in Vietnam.
Nixon attempted to reverse this decline in support for the war and outline an exit strategy by introducing a plan that came to be known as “Vietnamization” which called for drastic troop reductions, while taking measures to build up the South Vietnamese military so that they could hold their own against invasion from the north without relying so heavily on the support of American forces. This had a limited impact on public opinion of the war, particularly after the media was leaked information in 1970 concerning secret military operations that had been launched into the neutral nation of Cambodia. While this campaign was among the most successful of the whole war in terms of damage inflicted on enemy forces, the backlash that had been created by violating the neutrality agreement cancelled out any positive influence the victories may have had on public opinion of the war.
Damage from the Pentagon Papers
While the media coverage of the invasion of Cambodia was certainly frustrating for Nixon and his administration, nothing damaged government credibility more than the release of the “Pentagon Papers” which were leaked to the media in 1971. The Pentagon Papers implicated several administrations’ involvement in a cover-up regarding American intentions in Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers demonstrated that the US had a long-term strategy in Vietnam that included clandestine operations and misinformation campaigns aimed at garnering support for the war. They also showed that Lyndon Johnson intentionally misinformed both the American Public and congress about his intentions to escalate armed conflict in Vietnam. By publishing these documents the media effectively proved it’s influence as an agent for increased government accountability. It was a huge victory for journalists who had previously been ostracized for questioning the “official line” and legitimized the role of the press as a “4th branch” of government; capable of leveraging it’s own checks and balances against the powers that be.
In a case study of New York Times reporter Harrison Salisbury and his coverage of the war it is explained that journalism in the second half of the 20th century is an ideal tool for promoting the truth in situations when “administrations obfuscate U.S. policy goals and means, when Congress fails to exercise oversight and act as a meaningful check on the executive, or when individual leaders lie”(Hamilton, 82). The article goes on to describe the ways journalists during the war were bullied into reporting only State Department approved stories or issued reports that exaggerated military achievements. This latent bias is a central part of journalism; a liberal newspaper will have a liberal bias, a conservative paper will have a conservative bias. This is certainly part of what made television such an important journalistic tool during Vietnam; the images in a video can’t be doctored by political rhetoric, there is certain accountability to the truth when dealing with raw footage.
The war in Vietnam proved how vital the free press is to a democracy during wartime, and as an indicator of how important television would become as journalistic tool. It should be made clear that without the tireless investigations and integrity of objective journalists many more lives may have been lost and more money spent on a war that was inevitably doomed to failure. The 1960’s were a turbulent time in American history, both stateside and abroad, and it is important to acknowledge those who risked their reputations and careers to deviate from the stories that the executive branch would have liked to see air in an attempt to inject transparency and accountability into our political processes.