Influence of the Media on the Vietnam War

Influence of the Media on the Vietnam state of struggleThe Vietnam War was discordant for America for m any reasons, entirely the flip ab stunned the role of the media has draw close as contr e realwheresial as the state of war itself. A plebeian assessment that emerged shortly after its end was that freshspapers and idiot box networks had contri scarceed to the failure in Vietnam by becoming oppositional bringing the brutality of war, as well as criticism of the government, into American homes, influencing universal attitudes and ultimately bringing roughly the withdrawal. In policy-making and forces circles the medias stir was deemed to be so decisive that the surgical incision of Defense attempted the total exclusion of reporters from the invasion of Grenada in 1983, and introduced a new media pool system for the Panama invasion of 1989.In his 1986 book, The unexpurgated War, Daniel H exclusivelyin challenged this view that during the war the American media shif ted to an oppositional stance. In a strong observational ask, Hallin suggested the ingathering of detai lead reportage merely reflected the growing dissensus on the war, specially within the political elect(ip). Hallin has since emaciated broad support, certainly from the academic field, and this stress supports his conclusion that the media did non become a force of opposition.In argument that the US give-and-take media had little independent cushion on the ply of the war, however, I believe Hallin is wrong. This essay will begin with a apprize critique of Hallins 1986 battleground, as this will countenance a useful mannikin for analysis of the medias impact on the war. I will indicate wherefore it is a sound conclusion that the media was not an institution of opposition, before stressing triad omissions the changing media the impact of critical reporting and the ability of an objective media to work view and policy. The quest sections will expand these argum ents, in order to immortalise that they ar cite to understanding the medias impact, and that it must be con alignred a cistron in the ancestry of the Vietnam War. This essay will argue that the media did abide close to independent impact on the course of the Vietnam War through a vicious cycle of making information about the war available, and touch human race and elite group opinion. Once negative opinions formed, these were reported by the run and led to a greater split, making the cheek consider the publics chemical reaction to soldiers policy.Hallin a brief critiqueDaniel Hallin (1986) argues that word coverage was in the main supportive until 1968, operating within a champaign of consensus, with stories focused on a theme of American boys in action. The shift to critical coverage was out-of-pocket to elements within the administration beginning to argue publicly over the course of the war, the media never moved into a sphere of deviance where fundamental cri ticisms of the legitimacy of government action were made (Robinson, 2010). This shift at the while of the 1968 Tet nauseated reflected a breakdown of consensus regarding the war, twain in the political elite and wider society. Hallin attributes these get downings to two factors prevalent anti-communist ideology in the USA ensured journalists and government officials were united and the media continued to practice objective journalism the ideology and intelligence informationgathering routines of journalism did not change, the media continued employ official sources and not favouring opponents of administration policy.Hallin supports his theory using quantitative data relating to the content of news media and its progression through the War period. The strength of the study lies in this empirical approach the data are thorough and support his conclusions well, such as the fact that only 8% of all Vietnam stories contained comments reflecting favourably or unfavourably on maj or actors. therefrom Hallin provides a very persuasive response to the oppositional thesis, but his study is very much slight supportive to his argument that the media had little independent impact on the course of the war.This is due to his failure to develop his argument in name areas. The first is the dramatic changes taking place in the media at the date of Vietnam. It was not the first war where atrocities were committed, nor the first to involve political debate about its course, yet these were faithfully reported during Vietnam as they had been in no war antecedently. Hallin does not handle the reasons for this, and this is crucial for the evaluation of the medias impact. The second is the fix of negative reporting. Hallin does not analyse fully the solvent of broadcasts such as Walter Cronkites famous declaration of stalemate and the footage of General Loan cleanup position an disarm Vietcong prisoner. Hallins third omission is the consideration that an objective m edia by what it reports can compose have a significant impact on public and elite opinion. The media reported stories negatively charged to support for the war, albeit from an objective stance, and its ensnare could have been intensify by a vicious cycle.These omissions represent my arguments for the conclusion that the media did have whatsoever impact on the course of the Vietnam War, and they are discussed below.A changing mediaAt the judgment of conviction of the Vietnam War there were significant changes taking place that abnormal not only the stories that were available to journalists, but to a fault crucially the way in which the news was reported by the media. As has been seen since, these developments decreased the consummation of the medias deference in a prison term of war and enabled greater freedom (Robinson, 2010).Vietnam was a war of firsts in many respects. As Susan Carruthers (2000) notes, it was the first idiot box system war. Vietnam received sustained, al almost nightly, coverage for a number of years. It was the first war to be broadcast in colour (Culbert, 1998), and the first to benefit from new technologies such as satellites. In previous wars editors would order reporters to deliver undying pieces from the battlefield, such as troops securing an area or marching crossways countryside, as stories had to be physically brought back to the USA before broadcast. Without this difficulty broadcasts began to involve current battles and combat, as they were immediately relevant to the reporting of the wars progression. This meant that much more detail about the war, particularly its benevolent costs, reached the American public. Carruthers (2000) also points out that Vietnam marked the start of an age of investigative journalism that culminated in the Watergate scandal. As will be discussed below, the soldierys credibility gap encouraged journalists to calm out stories for themselves, making reporting much more independent than it had been in previous wars, where the media had relied on information from soldiery briefings.Daniel Hallin (1986) does refer to these changes, and the historical scope of the war in Vietnam. He concedes, Vietnam did push journalists away from the deference of an in the first place era, but perhaps neglects the significance of this change in relation to the medias impact on the war. Hallin notes that Vietnam was the first war in which reporters routinely accompanied military forces and were not subjected to censorship, giving the media extraordinary freedom to report the war without direct government control. I believe this freedom is extremely significant in the assessment of the impact of the media. It gave reporters unprecedented access to the war, which they could deliver first slide by to the American public through their tv sets and newspapers. In the words of Epstein (cited in Herman Chomsky, 1988), the military lost its control over the movements of the insistence, who could step out of their hotels and find themselves willy-nilly in the midst of bloody fighting. This freedom led to damaging exposs such as Morley Safers report video display the burning of the small town of Cam Ne in 1965, stories which would not have surfaced prior to Vietnam.The most definitive development relating to the medias influence in Vietnam was the increasing profile of television news. As Hallin (1986) attests, Television news came of age on the eve of Vietnam. CBS and NBC TV, Americas two biggest television networks, extended their nightly news bulletin from fifteen to thirty legal proceeding in 1963, with ABC following suit in 1967. The growth of television news had a profound effect on the way news, and especially the war, was reported. News had to be selective and visually dramatic. Carlyle Thayer (1992) explains the effect this had the war that Americans proverb was almost exclusively violent, miserable, or controversial guns firing, men falling, helicopt ers crashing, buildings toppling, huts burning, refugees fleeing, women wailing. For the first time the American public experienced the human suffering of war, not express by words or statistics, but by pictures that showed them details previously unknown to them.It must be said that Hallin (1986) credibly shows that mainstream media refrained from exposure of wars human costs for the considerable part of Vietnam. He receives support here from Lawrence Lichty, whose study of 2,300 network evening news reports from 1965 1970 showed that only 76 showed anything approaching uncoiled violence (Lichty cited in Thayer, 1992). Again, these are strong arguments in terms of disproving the oppositional thesis, but both Hallin and Lichty undervalue the effect that critical reporting can have on society.These dramatic changes in the information available to journalists, and the way in which they could report it, greatly increased the potentiality impact the media could have on the Administr ation and wartime policy.The impact of critical reportingDaniel Hallin (1986) demonstrates that there was a growth in critical coverage around the time of the 1968 Tet Offensive. In assessing the impact of the media on the war, I believe he underestimates just how critical, and how negative, whatever of the coverage of the war was during this period. While overall coverage may have remained objective, this is not to say that certain broadcasts were not detrimental to the war effort close to are still remembered as turning points in the war.The CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite was exposit as the most trusted man in America. On twenty-seventh February 1968, upon returning from an inspection of the war, he pro takeed, to say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory conclusion, while describing Vietnam as a bloody experience (Carruthers, 2000). Upon hearing this broadcast, president Johnson is alleged to have told aides, it is all over (Thussu Freed man, 2003). Its effect was vindicated to see. On 31st March Lyndon Johnson proclaimed he would not seek a second term as President, and in a speech to the media shortly afterwards made draw that they were in no small part responsible for his decision (Carruthers, 2000). Cronkite instanter contradicted the government line on the state of the war, and went further on CBS Radio, intercommunicate of the misleading picture of those optimistic stories weve heard about the progress of the war, and asking, bay window we, as a nation, face up to the prospect of an overwhelmingly dear(p) and bitter Asian War? (Braestrup, 1977). Here it is clear that Cronkite and CBS strayed in to Hallins sphere of deviance. The anchorman claimed the public had been misled by their government, and interrogative sentenceed the war itself.This was by no pith the only instance of extremely critical reporting. Hallin is silent on the grapple of the footage of General Loan, Chief of Police of South Vietna m, shooting an unarmed Vietcong well-wisher in the head, expose by NBC on 2nd February 1968. David Culbert (1998) is correct to punctuate the impact of both the footage and the still photograph, which appeared in newspapers around the world, on viewers and policy-makers alike. He also records the words of Frank McGhee, commentator for the unedited footage aired on 10th March, the war is being lost by the Administrations definition, showing another arm of the media questioning the legitimacy of the war.It is impossible, of course, to determine the actual effect of such reporting on public and elite opinion, but it is unwise to discount its impact altogether. This ignores the compelling visual evidence about the war that was offered to the American public. Culbert (1998) presents a quote from Peter Braestrup on the Loan killing that demonstrates this argument well It was a kind of ultimate horror account statement that you captured in living colour. But in terms of information it told you almost vigour. This is a crucial point, and one that will be returned to in the following section, that viewers were left to fill the information void with their own meaning, drawn from what they saw. No context was given to the incident, giving the impression that it was a common occurrence. ABCs anchorman Howard Smith even resigned in February 1968 claiming the media did not provide any context for the Loan shooting or the violence of the Tet Offensive as a whole (Culbert, 1998).Many scholars have dismissed the claim that television had such a large impact on the American public during the Vietnam War. Among them is John Mueller (1971), who argues that the media followed a shift in public opinion against the war, which had actually occurred in the two years prior to the Offensive. Mueller cites rising casualties as the reason for dwindling support for the war, suggesting a similar pattern could be seen in Korea, where television coverage was minimal. Thayer (1992) notes that one survey in 1968, the time at which critical coverage is meant to have had the greatest effect, found that less than half of the television households watched the news on a given evening. This provides a certain amount of perspective for the argument that television news contend a role in shaping public opinion.Nevertheless, in counsel on the violence, the controversy and the human costs of the Tet Offensive, the media contributed to turning what was a military success for the USA into a defeat for public opinion and elite consensus.Objective influence, and the vicious cycleThe most important argument against Hallins self-confidence that the media had little impact on the course of the war is the role the media plays in the forming of opinions at home. Again, Hallin is correct in saying that the media maintained an objective stance, and his study is very convincing on this subject. However, the public shape their opinions based on the information available to them, and, as demonstrated above, the media reported stories that were politically very damaging. As Melvin Small (1987) suggests, if the media does not cover it, then it might as well not have happened, as far as the impact on the President, his advisors, the general public, and even other nations is concerned, and during Vietnam the various arms of the press resolved to provide all information about the war, whether positive or negative. This is clearly an objective position, but by reporting the negative side of the war the media informed the public that there was in fact a negative side, influencing the debate. Hallin (1986) claims that it is unclear whether the effect of public opinion would have been any different had the media been subject to censorship, but this is a weak argument. If censorship were enforced, the public would have received most of their news about the war from the government, which as it is often repeated, was painting a rosy picture of Vietnam.David Culbert (1998) clai ms that in a time of uncertainty, compelling visual evidence has a power denied it in ordinary portion. While this is true of television broadcasts, it can be employ to the media as a whole in a time of restrict war. As Phillip Knightley (2004) argues, Vietnam was a war like no other, a war with no front line, no easily identifiable enemy, no only when explained cause, no clearly designated villain on whom to focus the nations hateand, therefore, no nationwide fervour of patriotism. Combine this with the credibility gap created by the military and the government the positivity about the war consistently presented at military briefings was at odds with what reporters in the field were seeing themselves, and this divergence became clear to the public and the media were granted an exceptional role in shaping public opinion on the war. It must also not be forgotten that multiple news sources can also influence elite opinion, and so indeed can the public, and this is the basis of t he vicious cycle that played some role in ending the war.It is widely agreed that the Tet Offensive was the key period of coverage of the Vietnam War, as this was the start of the shift to more critical reporting by the media. This is important because negative coverage in mainstream news encourages opponents of government policy to speak out. Hallin (1986) agrees that the anti-war movement was given increasing airtime, but says they remained fringe voices. However, how these voices were presented is not significant Hallin proves they were not afforded any favourable word it is the fact that they were aired at all that had the impact.Once mainstream media carries the question of the legitimacy of government action, the public and members of the Administration are free to consider it a credible response to the situation, and encouraged to question their own position. As William Hammond (1998) attests, the broadening of the debate touch on the attitudes of network anchormen and re porters Earlier in the war, Walter Cronkite had thought nothing of referring to the Viet Cong as the Communists. After Tet he did so rarely. Government officials beginning to discuss alternative actions publicly ensured this cycle continued. It is impossible to say which factor starts this process, which is wherefore the theory of the media being the first in a domino effect is unconvincing. It can be said, however, that critical coverage encouraged opponents to speak out about the war, were given credibility by the media, influencing public opinion and forcing the Administration to carefully consider its actions with regard to public reaction.This was clearly evident in Vietnam. I concur with Hallin that it is impossible to be certain how news affected the audience, but we can be sure that the media had an impact on the course of the war in straight influencing military decisions. Hallin (1986) agrees that considerations of public opinion were part responsible for the limitation s placed on the use of military power. Many from political and military circles maintain that intensive bombing of North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia could have produced victory (Carruthers, 2000), but it was rejected because the media would have shown its human costs. Targets were limited because extensive noncombatant casualties were seen as politically damaging this was only the case because the media had access to the stories of civilian casualties, and would certainly report them. The media prevented the conducting of the war by what the military deemed as the most appropriate means.ConclusionsWhatever the intention behind such relentless and material reporting of war, the result was a serious demoralisation of the home front, was President Nixons assessment of the impact of the media in Vietnam (Robinson, 2010).Its impact is still widely debated due to the fact that it is extremely difficult to determine the exact effect of news coverage on the American public over its durat ion. It is clear that both public opinion and the breakdown of elite political consensus were decisive in the course of the war, and its end. What Hallins study and many that support it fail to recognise is that the news media play a crucial role in the shaping of these opinions.The potential impact of this role was increased in Vietnam due to the unusual circumstances of limited war, and the dramatic changes that were occurring in the US news media at the time. The willingness of exalted profile journalists and broadcasters to make critical statements about the war compounded this effect. The compounding of these developments meant that the media had greater access to information both positive and negative about the war, but that the negative was more akin to the emerging style of television news. The media did not become an oppositional force, though some instances of critical reporting did directly question the legitimacy of Administration policy. In reporting, from an objectiv e stance, negative views of the war, the media invited Americans to question the credibility of the war and their government, part of a vicious cycle that led to more negative feeling about the war.