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Media in Vietnam

            "During particularly gripping testimony, one of the few mainstream camera crews present turned of its lights and packed up; the crew's exit sparked boos and jeers from the vets. That was the moment I became a media critic." (Myths, J. Cohen) Jeff Cohen's words seem to echo his opinion of the mainstream media here in the United States. In his article Cohen's views seem to swing him towards seeing the media as a bum going to work, if their not already late then their probably checking out early. While he could most likely find any number of other examples of bad or poor news coverage, he focuses on the news coverage during the Vietnam War. A war in which some would say the media helped turn the country against the war and the troops who fought in it. While coverage of the Vietnam War may have been flawed, it is not necessarily all the Medias fault.
             Cohen bases most of his theories on the role the media played during the Vietnam War on one incident that took place during the month of March in 1968. The My Lai massacre was incident involving U.S. Navy Seals and hundreds of Vietnamese civilians near Thanh Phong. Lead by former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey the seals were sent into My Lai were the rules of engagement had just been loosened and proceeded to slaughter over a hundred innocent Vietnamese civilians. After the massacre the media did not immediately follow up on the story even though there was an abundance of evidence to support its authenticity. Here is where Cohen finds his problem, he believes that such a story should be told immediately and in his thinking he is correct. Something like the story this atrocity needs to be told and by design it is the Medias job to inform the public. What Cohen doesn't see in this situation is that the media is not only reporting information that they are given, but they are also reporting what the masses want to hear. If the ratings are good when you report on how well the war effort is going then you probably aren't going to go out of your way to tell the American people that we are over in Vietnam killing innocent people.


Essays Related to Media in Vietnam

1. The Role Media Played in Military Conflicts

... military journalists or the media have been stuffed with anti-media cant designed to prove that the press lost the war. The public was participant in every phase of the Vietnam War when it was fought in the 1960's while before there was dichotomy between civilian and military. The Vietnam War was being fought in people's living rooms. This is the role the media played in Vietnam, to bring the ... war into people's living rooms. Vietnam wasn't the first war to be brought into peoples ... homes (world war two was) and it wasn't the last. All this was thanks to the press's coverage of the...

  • Word Count: 1919
  • Approx Pages: 8
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2. Making Sense of the Vietnam War

... the brutality of the war rather than the complexity behind it. Without the knowledge of the events leading to these battles, the videos made the war in Vietnam look like barbaric chaos. In a perfect world the media would be used solely to accurately inform the American people about current events. Unfortunately this is not the case, the news corporation is a business looking ... 1965. Prior to 1965 the United States had minimal involvement with the conflict in Vietnam. However in July of 1965 President Johnson increased to American troops stationed in Vietnam to 175,000. The increase i...

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3. Media: The Puppeteer of the Public

... depicting Bugs and the gang in Word War I or World War II garb and situations? Bugs was always the red-blooded American hero and those Germans were depicted as despicable varmints. Those cartoons went along with the support the government had with the media in battling those wars. But then came Korea and Vietnam. And the government and the media were no longer bedfellows. The ... media became an enemy as great as the one the country was battling thousands of miles away ... morale remained high. This included both generating enthusiasm for the cause and barring the manipulation of our m...

  • Word Count: 1448
  • Approx Pages: 6
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

4. Power of Media

... its tremendous audience and the impact it has, the media has been able to change public opinion, American policy, and even American history. The media's powerful influence can be seen through its portrayal of major events like the Vietnam War, The Spanish-American War, Watergate and several others. Through the years the role of media in publish affairs has changed as its influence has grown ... . The focus of my research is on how media originated and its influence on several historical events ... . When the media began, it had a political agenda. It was an outlet ... ...

  • Word Count: 1457
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5. The Vietnam War - Lessons and Mistakes

... number of American advisors from 900 to 15,000 with the help of increased economic aid. It was becoming very clear that the conflict in Vietnam was becoming more of an American probably and we really had no choice but become more involved if we wanted to ensure communism did ... family; he was aloof and distant, a man with no popular following and neither inclined nor equipped to acquire one; and he was a devout Catholic in a Vietnam that was less than 15 percent Catholic. But Diem had sound credentials as a nationalist and impeccable ones as an anti-Communist. " (Hopkins, pg. ... of ca...

  • Word Count: 4657
  • Approx Pages: 19
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6. Vietnam War affects on America

... America hurtling into the war and on March 8, 1965, two battalions of Marines, numbering 3,500, were sent in to help support the South Vietnamese defense of Da Nang. By the end of the year, there were 180,000 soldiers in Vietnam (Fowler 33). For the first time, the media and television journalists brought war into the homes of the American people. By 1970, the ... media was declaring that the Vietnam War was impossible to win, influencing some Americans to turn against the war. The press also discovered ... some top secret US government documents, also known as the "Pentagon Papers." T...

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7. Media in Vietnam

The war in Vietnam - was fought by two forces - the American soldier and the American media. It could be argued that the soldiers lost and the media won. The Vietnam war was like no other before it. It certainly was not a war embellished with all the glamour of the World wars that came before it. Unlike the first and second ... .[4] Even with this new development, the legitimacy of the press, the early history of Vietnam and its relation to the U.S. media is one that is controlled by what the government is willing to tell it and one in which the media itself was willing to listen. For the mos...

  • Word Count: 2018
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8. Vietnam War

... that hated them. They felt as if they were being sent in place of whites, but in fact only 12.5% of all troops in Vietnam were black, and it was merle stretched facts and media influence that caused the black eruptions in America (Westmoreland, VHFCN). As America boiled, the "photographers war" continued in Vietnam (Cohen). The Vietnam War has been said on countless occasions to be the most photographed ... war in history. The reason for this is the development and improvement of the camera. The ... two-thirds of the men who served were drafted (Westmoreland, VHFCN). "Approximately se...

  • Word Count: 1625
  • Approx Pages: 7
  • Grade Level: High School

9. Vietnam war

... sources of information about the war were newspapers and radio, which both faced declining use because of television's popularity. The importance of studying the television media from 1965 to 1970 is based on several factors. Although United States forces became directly involved in Vietnam in 1961, the number of personnel in Vietnam was a relatively small until 1965, when large numbers of US forces were sent to ... 446). After the coup against Diem in 1963, the media were able to go about their business without fearing reprisals from the police. CBS was the news leader during the Vietn...

  • Word Count: 1969
  • Approx Pages: 8
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

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