The Vietnam War and the Thesis of the Oppositional Media

This paper handles the importance of International Media in affecting the course of the Vientam War. It provides a chronolgical narrative of events based on the work of Warren Cohen (2000) and the lecture notes of the course 'History of International Politics' by Senan Fox (2016, Kanazawa). following the narrative a select number of relevant news reports will be projected on the narrative in order to get a primitive overview of the potential effect of the media and public opinions on the course of the war.

In this essay I explain the role of the U.S. Media the Vietnam war

2016

The Journal of Asian Studies, 2002

Canberra 1998 © David G. Marr and the several authors each in respect of the papers contributed by them; for the full list of the names of such copyright owners and the papers in respect of which they are the copyright owners see the Table of Contents of this volume.

The American involvement in Vietnam between 1958 and 1975 could be considered one of the most divisive conflicts to date. After World War II, American foreign policy could be defined as being one of modernization. The United States went from being an isolationist nation prior to World War II to being one of reconstruction — particularly in Western Europe — following the fall of Axis powers in 1945. This policy started to take shape and expanded when communist North Korea invaded its capitalist neighbor to the south. American military units were used as part of an international force sponsored by the United Nations to halt the incursion into South Korea by the Chinese-backed North. This along with the fall of the Iron Curtain — where the Soviet Union divided the continent between eastern communist nations and western capitalist ones — set the stage for the Cold War pitting the capitalistic ideology against that of the communists. The policy of stopping the spread of communist ideology expanded further following the removal of French forces from North Vietnam. Once France lost control of the North, the Communist-led regime sought to reunite the country and began invading the South. With America’s foreign policy, the government believed it was the role of the United States to bolster the efforts of South Vietnam. This involvement only escalated in the early 1960s and, at its peak, American forces numbered over 536,000. From the end of World War II to Vietnam, the role of the media and its coverage of conflict abroad changed. During World War II, the media included only print and some radio broadcasters reporting from locations away from the front lines. In Korea, that practice remained the same. At home, coverage of foreign policy decisions was confined to being managed by the presidential administration. However, during the Vietnam era, journalists found themselves embedded with military units in-country and domestic coverage went beyond regurgitation of government messages as journalists exerted more freedom from political elites. Despite the increased involvement of the press in coverage of on-ground actions in Vietnam and policy coverage in Washington, D.C., the shaping of American foreign policy during the conflict was limited in more of a mirror of political elites and their growing distaste for American involvement in Southeast Asia. The question this study will address is just how did media shape the foreign policy decisions made during the Vietnam War? This study will begin with a review of relevant literature pertaining to the media and its role in shaping public opinion. From there will be an examination of the American foreign policy doctrine under the presidential administrations of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon as it pertains to involvement in Vietnam. Following that examination, the actions of the press and its coverage of troop actions in Vietnam and foreign policy decisions made by presidential administrations and Congress will be documented. This will culminate in the thesis that the American media did very little to shape the foreign policy decisions made by leaders of the time. It is, in fact, the leaders themselves who caused public upheaval and their decisions forced a deviation in foreign policy from modernization and stopping the spread of communism to a “peace with honor” strategy that led to the end of American involvement in Vietnam.

During the 20th century the way that the media has been covering the international conflicts has changed. With the television it became easier to show the general public what happened during the conflicts. In this essay we'll compare and contrast how was the media during the Vietnam War and the Falklands wars, and we'll determine if the way the media coverage of war has any effect on the outcome of it. In order to it, we'll use theories such as the liberal and realist perspective of the international relationships, and the orthodox and alternative views of the media.

Media, Culture & …, 2005

Ever since US military failure in Vietnam led to claims that media bias had undermined the war effort, the subject of wartime relations between media, the military and government has rarely escaped academic scrutiny. During the Cold War, both US-and UK-based studies of wartime media–state relations tended to emphasize the consistency between media and government agendas (eg Glasgow University Media Group, 1985; Hallin, 1986). During the 1990s there appeared to be a change, and a plethora of accounts emerged claiming that ...

2015

The Vietnam War was a hallmark in journalism history. Not only was newspaper reporting placed in a prominent role, both on the front lines and at home, but for the first time television was also utilized to bring the horrors of war into the living room. Vietnam may have been in Southeast Asia, but half the fighting occurred in the United States because journalists in Vietnam brought a different, pragmatic view to the American public than what the government was providing. The latter’s misleading optimism and, in some cases, outright deception soon ignited an anti-war movement previously unseen on American soil. Using four pivotal Vietnam War events as case studies, this thesis will illustrate journalists’ influence, showing how important journalism was in the “living room war of the 1960s and 1970s.”