In January 1963, South Vietnamese forces engaged the Viet Cong at the Battle of Ap Bac. Under that framework, the Americans' role in South Vietnam was only to render advice and support in its war against the Communists. Kennedy conceived of the American role in the war. The basic policy governing how the US mission in Saigon handled the reporters reflected the way the administration of President John F.
That was followed by other journalists arriving from Reuters, AFP, Time and Newsweek. As a result, the New York Times sent the first reporter to Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. The death of civilians in an attempted coup against President Diem at the end of 1960 started to change how South Vietnam was viewed by the media. After the United States threw its weight behind Ngo Dinh Diem, who became South Vietnam's president in 1955, media in the United States ignored the new leader's despotic tendencies and instead highlighted his anti-communism.
The first editorial about the rise of communism in Vietnam was published by The New York Times in January 1955. In asking how the United States got into Vietnam, attention must be paid to the enormous strength of the Cold War consensus in the early 1960s shared by journalists and policymakers alike and due to the great power of the administration to control the agenda and the framing of foreign affairs reporting. The news then reflected communism and the Cold War. The French colonial government set up a system of censorship, but correspondents traveled to Singapore or Hong Kong to file their reports without constraint. position that the Tet Offensive was a failure. These reversals on the battlefield failed to register on the American home front, as shocking photos and television imagery, along with critical appraisals by influential commentators like CBS television anchor Walter Cronkite, undermined the U.S. The Viet Cong would never again fight effectively as a cohesive force. People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and Viet Cong (VC) troops throughout the South attacked in force for the first time in the war over the course of the offensive, 50,000 of these troops were killed (by Army of the Republic of Vietnam and American troops). During the 1968 Tet Offensive, the North Vietnamese government erred in its certainty that widespread assaults would trigger a supportive uprising of the population. Johnson’s handling of the war and 57 percent disapproved (the rest had no opinion). By early February 1968, a Gallup poll showed only 32 percent of the population approved of President Lyndon B. This led to an increase in public pressure to end the war. Others felt betrayed by their government for not being truthful about the war. involvement, though many Americans continued to support it. As reports from the field became increasingly accessible to citizens, public opinion began to turn against U.S. and South Vietnam, despite the optimism of official accounts. Many journalists who visited South Vietnam during the war were not primarily interested in the culture or the way of life practiced there, but on the conduct of the war and the disparity between official accounts of it and what journalists were seeing on the ground.īy the mid-1960s, it was becoming increasingly clear that the war was not going well for the U.S. The media played an immense role in what the American people saw and believed. Īs more American households obtained television sets, it became easier for citizens to keep up with the war.
Journalists focused more on research, interviews and analytical essays to obtain information rather than press conferences, official news releases and reports of official proceedings. media eventually began to change its main source of information. Heavily influenced by government information management in the early years of the conflict, the U.S.
Intense levels of graphic news coverage correlated with dramatic shifts of public opinion regarding the conflict, and there is controversy over what effect journalism had on support or opposition to the war, as well as the decisions that policymakers made in response. The role of the media in the perception of the Vietnam War has been widely noted. The role of the news media in the perception of the Vietnam war among the American people
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