But something did pivot when Cronkite crossed the line into opinion. Vietnam. America “lost” South Vietnam because it was an artificial construct created in the wake of the French loss of Indochina. The referees of history may make it a draw.”. Except that the executed fighter had just killed the police chief’s close friend and the friend’s family. The United States lost almost 60,000 personnel and civilians in Vietnam: 58,269 servicemen were killed and another 1,672 recorded as missing. Jon Mixon, who has studied military actions during war times, feels that the Vietnamese War was lost by the Americans because South Vietnam was a product of France’s loss during the Indo-china War. The Vietnam War was the first major war to be televised and documented through the media. The average American watches 4.5 hours of TV a day. Since the beginning of the World War II, television gradually became familiar to the public. Senator John Kerry’s experience with the communist-backed protest organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW).. More than 58,000 U.S. military personnel died in the Vietnam War, and by far the bloodiest year was 1968, when 16,899 Americans perished — an average of 46 a day. Partisan journalists, wielding verbal flamethrowers, view their “objective” counterparts as retailers of false balance. Your email address will not be published. Walter Conkrite didn’t have too much to do with it. Not exactly an impressive lot. Estimates include both civilian and military deaths in North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This essay will discuss to what degree the media can be blamed for the United States' loss in the Vietnam conflict ending 1975. Of the many myths that mushroomed from the carnage of the Vietnam War perhaps none is more specious than the fable about how a bold, aggressive mainstream media turned America against the war. The US held back on running a full scale war and maintained a limited kind of ‘police action’ which resulted simply in dragging on a slow bleed for years. Yet, Vietnam fell to the communists. It was part of a larger regional conflict as well as a manifestation of the Cold War. Something as simple as the notion that Vietnam was a “TV war” incites academic blowback. Cronkite told Kennedy that he should run for president. It was so even while we suffered a tactical defeat in Vietnam. Second our bombing of N. Vietnam was haphazard & Lyndon Johnson & SEC DEF Robert Strange (& he was) McNamara commanded when & who to bomb. “He was just doing the gumshoe reporting all over Vietnam, and the print reporters all swooned over Cronkite for doing it,” says historian and Cronkite biographer Douglas Brinkley. This is not a liberal vs. conservative argument. He argued the opposite. By Quora Contributor. How, in effect, we could kill more Vietnamese. 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. (They were afraid of the Chinese and Soviets, which is in itself arguable). Never-the-less, one must wonder just how much Cronkite could possibly have learnt or absorbed in only two weeks. Cronkite’s remarks were decidedly more temperate than other contemporaneous media assessments about the war. Kennedy then had an important lunch, with . I thought we were winning the war!” he said. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. At the end of January 1968, at the start of the Tet Lunar New Year, the Viet Cong broke a cease-fire by launching surprise attacks on dozens of cities across South Vietnam. Share. Not exactly the best and the brightest. Cronkite doesn’t talk about military casualties. I can count,” the president said. history. But then again, that’s never stopped you before. The context in which Vietnam appeared to fall under Soviet influence is critical. During this time, he has lead a drive for videoliteracy, and the complete rethinking of how television is made and controlled. A power that has no countervailing force to make sure that it also stays in balance. When he’d visited Vietnam on a reporting trip early in the war, he’d been annoyed by the attitude of the young reporters who seemed to be “engaged in a contest among themselves to determine who was the most cynical,” he wrote in his autobiography. It was May 25, 1968. The media culture no longer requires or wants someone with the authority to say, as Cronkite did every night at the close of his broadcast, “And that’s the way it is . There had been lot of controversy about the coverage of Falkland War and also about the U.S. invasion of Grenada when the media was not allowed to go to the war theatre with the invading troops. Voraussetzung seien Maske und Abstand - die Läden hätten aber die Wirksamkeit ihrer Hygienekonzepte bereits nachgewiesen. Our Public Affairs Officer showed the staff a video about the media misinformation (CBS News) concerning the battle for Khe Sanh. As the pundit class sinks into a new quagmire debating former Sen. Bob Kerrey’s Vietnam mission, it’s a good time to dissect the myth. It looks like a home movie. Cronkite left Hue in a helicopter carrying the remains of 12 Marines in body bags. The media lost the war for America. Images of warfare and dead or wounded American soldiers brought the war home. Instructors: Michael Rosenblum & Lisa Lambden. After World War II, France assumed that it would retake control of its colonial holdings in Southeast Asia - Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.The Southeast Asian people had different ideas, however. Then came the Tet Offensive. In essence, we got into the war to prevent the toppling of dominos in Southeast Asia, and we effectively succeeded, which was, in reality, a strategic victory. I am a retired naval officer (1965 -1995). But I could see that the body-count war was being lost. S soldier was forgotten in Vietnam. Learn the tactics used by both sides and the growing opposition to war in the USA. Hallin argues that the media methodically reported the Vietnam War (69). When the Founders drafted the Constitution, newspapers were in their infancy.  Benjamin Franklin was printing one of the very first papers in the country in Philadelphia. The U.S. initially claimed, for example, that American military personnel were merely observers, not combatants. Only when the elites began to question American strategy did news reports take on an antiestablishment slant (Hallin 513). And while the Constitution clearly protects the right to a free press in the First Amendment, it is equally clear that the Founders never envisioned the kind of power that the Media has today. Did the news media, led by Walter Cronkite, lose the war in Vietnam? The major U.S. strategic objective in Vietnam was to prevent the expansion of Soviet and Chinese Communist influence in South East Asia. Laos and Cambodia also became independent in 1954, but were both drawn into the Vietnam War. And thus, today, Cronkite’s daring, historic, precedent-busting words about Vietnam would probably be greeted with hot takes of outrage, for one reason or another — in the brief moments before those words were lost in the noise. The Vietnam war was the first to be televised. The role of the media in the Vietnam War is a subject of continuing controversy. They were able to regain the countryside because ARVN forces left them to defend the cities. Media and the War. As for Vietnam, one may argue the merits of American involvement at all, but if you decide to become embroiled in a war, you better set out to win it, Of course, in the long run capitalism triumphed instead – money always wins out. I do not believe this is an accurate assessment of the war, especially with all of the academic scholarship out to refute that revisionist theory. Sounds interesting thought. Why?The absence of a clear explanation is not an accident. To Set the Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry offers a chilling insight into the media manipulation of the Vietnam War and the records involving U.S. That anecdote from a presidential aide is, like so many things involving this war, the subject of dispute. --Marshall McLuhan, 1975. Instead of aggressively looking for stories that would show U.S. troops as war criminals or agents of an immoral policy, American reporters were if anything notably reluctant to report on atrocities or unnecessary civilian casualties. The American media had a huge impact on the Vietnam war. There is nothing better than being a college student. A Vietnam War photographer captured the bloody Tet offensive. The role of the news anchor has been diminished. But then he went to Hue, the ancient imperial capital, where the most intense urban fighting of the war was grinding along day after day, house to house, room to room. The Gallup organization had been asking Americans since 1965 if the U.S. made a mistake by getting involved in Vietnam. What happend ? — to run for a U.S. Senate seat in New York. Cronkite, who retired from his anchor position in 1981, worked on a 1987 documentary series on the Vietnam War. April 30,2000, marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the real end of the Vietnam War: the "fall" of Saigon—which was quickly renamed Ho Chi Minh City. But that’s life. Fifty years later, he bears witness again. The media. Nov 16, 2014 7:14 AM. media lost the war in Vietnam. America was deeply affected by these heavy losses and struggled to understand the meaning, significance and lessons of the Vietnam War. By early 1968, “stalemate” was a decidedly unoriginal — and fairly orthodox — way of characterizing the war effort. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America--not on the battlefields of Vietnam." I am sure they could have. Peter Jennings, 10th grade dropout. In Vietnam, Gary R. Hess describes and evaluates the main arguments of scholars, participants, and journalists – both revisionist and orthodox in their approach – as they consider why the United States was unable to achieve its objectives. America Lost the Vietnam War for a Very Simple Reason. Trackback URL: https://www.rosenblumtv.com/2009/07/did-the-media-lose-vietnam/trackback/. The Vietnam War was a conflict, which the United States involved itself in unnecessarily and ultimately lost. Now the war came to them. Was the war winnable?  I think so. Army & Navy Vietnam Veterans. Instead, Cronkite and his producers assess the progress of the war on the terms set by U.S. commanders, such as whether the “pacification” program had suffered a setback from the Viet Cong. Vietnam War was the first to have the use of television and perhaps it could not be managed so well by the U.S. generals and is usually blamed for the US defeat in Vietnam. We had killed close to a million enemy soldiers. More than 20 years ago, Neil Postman warned that one of the great dangers of television news was that it conveyed what he called ‘the illusion of knowledge’.  The superficiality that television almost mandates, married to a superficial understanding of complex issues can be dangerous.  Was it so with Uncle Walter in Vietnam? Download file to see previous pages Vietnam War is an example from history where American media could not handle the war to protect the gains of the forces. Now that doesn’t look like a communist victory. As the pundit class sinks into a new quagmire debating former Sen. Bob Kerrey’s Vietnam mission, it’s a good time to dissect the myth. The Cam Ne dispatch by Safer is a classic moment in journalism, but an even more legendary report came from Cronkite. In their living rooms watching the evening news, Americans regularly saw film of airplanes flying, often dropping bombs, and troops on patrol, sometimes in combat. Particularly history. They argue that the media’s tendency toward negative reporting helped to undermine support for the war in the United States while its uncensored coverage provided valuable information to the enemy in Vietnam. He acknowledges that what he is about to say is “subjective.” It’s his opinion. In Saigon, 19 guerrilla fighters entered the U.S. Embassy compound through a hole they’d blown in the outer wall. . Public approval of the war effort gradually eroded. Download file to see previous pages Vietnam War is an example from history where American media could not handle the war to protect the gains of the forces. wait for it . .”. > News Media and Politics lost the war ! The issue here, I think transcends Vietnam. Last month, I did a series of posts commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of U.S. combat troops in Vietnam on March 8, 1965. That photo incited revulsion, depicting a callous disregard for human life. The Vietnam War was the first major war to be televised and documented through the media. The Vietnam War is often referred to as the first televised war. As a former PhD candidate in Islamic Studies, I can tell you that that was a tsunami of inaccuracy, misinformation and sloppy reporting. And Mark Bowden, author of a new book on the Battle of Hue, wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times, “Cronkite was right. . By the end of the war in Vietnam, the North had lost more than 2 million dead and was too weakened to pose a threat to any but its neighbors Laos and Cambodia. Media coverage during the Vietnam War was a very important reason why the US lost the war as sources D to L show and do so very well. It was so even while we suffered a tactical defeat in Vietnam. See all posts by Patrick Hollis → The Longest Wars in Human History. The media lost the war for America; Reflecting on the Events; Television; Journalism; More Information; The Vietnam War. . I was the bad-news messenger. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not on the battlefields of Vietnam”[1] The impact of the media on society had never been seen to the extent of its impact on the Vietnam conflict. For Higher History, study the reasons the USA lost the war in Vietnam. m. I am a history major at CSU Fresno and have been studying the Vietnam conflict for about a year and a half now. CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite went to Vietnam to provide viewers with an assessment of the war… best Vietnam War "Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Never had so many journalists been on the ground in a hostile nation. “What the hell is going on? Safer’s report showed Marines using flamethrowers and Zippo lighters to ignite the thatching on the huts amid wails of despair from Vietnamese women and children. Much of the U.S. effort was aimed at rooting out communist guerrilla fighters in South Vietnam — the “pacification” effort.