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TELEVISION BRINGS THE NEWS INTO YOUR HOME

Television and the Living Room War The Vietnam War lasted from 1959–1975. It is considered by many to be the most controversial war in United States history. More than 58,000 Americans were killed in the war. The Vietnam War affected the country in a number of ways. It divided the country politically. It is even partly responsible for an amendment to the Constitution. This discussion, however, will focus on how the war changed the media and vice versa.

The Vietnam War has often been dubbed the "living room" war. This is because, for the first time in history, the television brought coverage of the war into American homes night after night. The Associated Press (AP) even set up a headquarters in Saigon, the capital city of South Vietnam. In this section, you'll examine how media coverage affected public opinion and even the outcome of the war. But first, let's do a quick recap of the conflict.

Vietnam is a country in Southeast Asia. It was controlled by the French until the First Indochina War of 1946–1954. The treaty that ended the war was also supposed to provide for an election in Vietnam, but that election was called off. As a result, several groups started fighting over control of the country. The fighting divided the country into North and South. North Vietnam was ruled by the Vietmihn (a Communist group). Meanwhile, in South Vietnam, the guerilla group, Vietcong, and the Ngo Dinh Diem Regime were fighting for power. The Vietcong were a group of pro-Communist guerilla fighters supported by the Vietminh. The Ngo Dinh Diem Regime (a.k.a., South Vietnamese Army) was a democratic group. The Vietminh and Vietcong wanted to unite the country under a Communist government.

Vietnam itself is a small country, but many feared its impact on the rest of Southeast Asia. They thought that if South Vietnam fell to Communism, so would the countries that surrounded it. Generally, people thought that if the South Vietnamese were defeated, all of Southeast Asia would fall to Communism. Each group got support from bigger, stronger countries. China and Russia sided with the Communist Vietminh. The United States government at the time felt that the spread of Communism was very harmful to democracy. For this reason, the U.S. allied with the South Vietnamese army.

The U.S. first began to send military advisors and volunteers to Vietnam as early as 1950. Between 1965 and 1972, however, the conflict grew much larger. The U.S. had to use the Selective Service system, or the draft, to maintain the number of troops in the country. This meant that men between 18 and 34 could be sent to fight involuntarily. Meanwhile, the voting age in the U.S. was twenty-one years of age. This meant that men who did not have a voice in the government were forced to go to war. The draft was a controversial subject. For this reason, it became the target of much media discussion and many protests.

You have read a quick overview of the conflicts that started the Vietnam War. Now you will be better able to how the media related to the war. You will study the effect of media on public opinion. You will also examine how media may have even affected the outcome of the war itself.

Upbeat, Visual, and Personal For the first few years of the Vietnam War, television coverage was, for the most part, upbeat. Reporters stationed at the Saigon Bureau wrote daily reports and sent them to the news stations back in the states. Newscasts were formulaic. They began with a summary about the troops' activities, using battlefield maps to illustrate movement for the readers. Next, networks would usually show a "policy" piece from Washington (i.e., something about the decisions being made in the government regarding the war). Finally, the networks would run field footage. That is, they would show tapes of the troops taken by the on-the-scene reporters at the Saigon Bureau.

key point Although the coverage of the Vietnam War included video footage, remember that it was not live. Unlike the footage you may see today of events such as Hurricane Katrina or the War in Iraq, the film from Vietnam was often delayed by several days. This is because technology wasn't as advanced as it is today. Tapes had to be taken by field reporters and then flown back to the U.S. for processing. Television gave the reports on the war a new focus. In the past, reports about wars were typically focused on facts and figures. Newspapers reported, for instance, casualties or the outcome of battles. With television, the focus shifted. Now, visual images and personal stories were becoming more important. Television stations were competing for viewers. Giving the audience something personal to identify with was a good way to get people to watch their programming. In the beginning of the war's coverage, reports often focused on the patriotism of U.S. troops. Footage often displayed young American soldiers and their skill at handling weaponry.

stretch You may have studied logos, ethos, and pathos before. Each of these is a type of rhetoric, that is to say, a means of influencing another person's belief system. Logos is an appeal to a person's logic and uses facts and figures to convince. Ethos uses the author or speaker's authority to convince. Pathos plays upon the emotions of the audience to influence their beliefs. Showing pictures of the troops "fighting for democracy" is an example of pathos. These types of pictures and stories appeal to people's sense of patriotism or love for their country and what it means to them. Fueling the Fires of Controversy Many critics agree that in the beginning, coverage of the war was fairly "safe." That is to say, nothing too violent or controversial made its way into the news. That all changed in 1967. American casualties were rising. People began to realize that the U.S. was not going to be able to easily pull out of Vietnam. People became divided over the war. Some believed that it was worthwhile for the U.S. to stay involved in the conflict and fight against Communism. Others believed that the U.S. was fighting someone else's war and thought that the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese should settle their conflict between themselves. That year, polls began to show the majority of Americans thought that becoming involved in the conflict was a mistake. The media, it seemed, began to follow suit. Coverage grew less upbeat and more bloody.

In 1967, the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive, which was a series of violent surprise attacks on South Vietnamese and American targets (including the American Embassy). During this period of the war, NBC ran footage of Nguyen Ngoc Loan (a South Vietnamese general) shooting a captive in the streets of Saigon. This footage was quite controversial, as it showed a brutal attack being carried out by a U.S. ally. Other footage showing American troops burning huts in enemy villages was also controversial. Then-president Lyndon B. Johnson expressed distaste with the media's portrayal of Americans and American allies in these types of situations.

The Tet Offensive was a turning point both for the war itself and for the media's reporting and the public's opinion of it. From a media standpoint, an important line was crossed. The coverage shifted from upbeat, positive stories to more action-paced coverage. Many pinpoint the Saigon shooting as the time when media outlets adopted an "anything goes" attitude. Networks began to show more coverage of air raids and, in general, more fighting.

A No-Win Situation Many who've studied the media's coverage of Vietnam place a great deal of significance on Walter Cronkite's special broadcast from Vietnam, which ran in February of 1968. Cronkite, a very popular news reporter, expressed his personal view that the U.S. was in a no-win situation and should find a way to withdraw from Vietnam. Very soon after Cronkite's speech, President Johnson dropped out of the 1968 presidential race where he was up for reelection. Johnson is reported to have told advisors that if he had lost Cronkite's support for his policy on Vietnam, he had lost the rest of the country, too.

did you know Some who studied media coverage of the Vietnam War called it "the first American War to be declared over by an anchorman." Both this quotation and what Johnson is rumored to have told his advisors illustrate how influential the media was. Anchormen, in general, were familiar and trusted by the viewers. The Draft, Student Activism, and the Free Speech Movement In the 1960s, the generation of babies born just after World War II (called the Baby Boomers) was entering adulthood. Years of postwar prosperity gave this new generation more opportunities than any before it. Record numbers of young people went to college instead of entering the workforce right after high school. Social changes were brewing. American values were changing. Rock-and-roll music became popular, as did movies about teenage rebellion. Many young college students adopted the "question authority" attitude. This is important in terms of media because with these changes came the Free Speech Movement.

for more information The term "baby boom" refers to a period of increased birth rate that took place in the U.S. just after World War II. The same economic prosperity that led Americans to purchase luxury items such as televisions also increased the number of babies born. Families had more money and thus, more babies. The children born between 1946 and 1964 were called baby boomers. Many of these children (those born closer to the start of the baby boom) became adults during the time of the conflict in Vietnam. Student activists at the University of California at Berkeley were among the most radical. In 1964, the students staged a raid of the university's administration building when the school refused to allow them to distribute fliers about the Civil Rights Movement. More than seven hundred students were arrested, and many went on strike from attending classes to show their dislike of school policies. Berkeley remained a frontrunner, but this activism was spreading like wildfire to schools all over the country.

Students were also the first to start protests over the war. The Selective Service Act, which went into effect during the Korean War (1950–53), allowed the government to draft young men from 18 to 26 to serve in the military. In 1965, the conflict in Vietnam had escalated and President Johnson had doubled the number of young men who could be drafted. As mentioned earlier, the voting age in the U.S. at this time was twenty-one. This meant that young men were not old enough to vote for the elected officials who could send them to fight in the war. Student activists opposed the U.S. involvement in the war in the first place, and their distaste only grew as more young men were drafted. Student-staged protests were heavily covered by the media. Television broadcasts of police in riot gear being violent toward protestors were common. These protests (and their presence in the media) and the growing number of deaths in Vietnam, were steadily changing American's thoughts about the war. By 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson had dropped out of the presidential race. Richard Nixon won the election later that year.

The Silent Majority stretch Why do suppose the silent majority was so silent? Have you ever heard the saying, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"? It is a fancy way of saying that the group that makes the most noise gets the most attention. This was especially true in the case of the student activists. Although far from the majority, the student activists made headlines with their "squeaking." That is to say, their protests often ended in violence and disorder (on the part of protestors and the police), attracting attention and interest on the part of the public and the media. It is important to remember, even as you view media today, that groups in the spotlight don't always reflect the thoughts and feelings of the majority. Actually, quite often they do not. The middle ground, after all, isn't usually sensational, exciting, or controversial. These adjectives describe precisely what the media began to cover during the Vietnam era and continues to cover today. The media was full of radical protests of the war. The attention given to the student protests helped fuel the antiwar movement. It also, however, alarmed many Americans. They were worried about the violence and disorder caused by the activists. Nixon knew that the average American, even if he opposed the war, wanted to maintain law and order in the country. In his campaign, he appealed to both those who wanted to end the war (promising a secret plan to stop it) and those who wanted to maintain law and order. In 1969, he gave a televised speech about the "silent majority." He stated that those Americans who supported law and order and the country (whether or not they personally believed that Vietnam was a good idea) should not let the radicals speak for them. He said that allowing a vocal minority to take over a silent majority was harmful to freedom and democracy.

Before Nixon ran for reelection in 1972, he began taking steps toward U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. After the U.S. withdrew, South Vietnam fell to Communism. Although one of the major reasons for U.S. involvement in the war was the domino theory (which held that if one country fell to Communism, all others would follow), only two other nations, Laos and Cambodia, became Communist. The Vietnam War is regarded in the U.S. as a controversial war. It was widely regarded both in the media and in the history books as a very costly mistake.

The Vietnam War changed television and news reporting. The popularity of the television made news more visual and more personal. As the sixties and the coming-of-age Baby Boomers brought a change in American values, the media kept up. Gone were the days of World War II-era censorship. In their place was a new attitude. The Baby Boomers called upon the media to report more than just facts and figures.

Use the information from the lesson to answer the following questions.