An Analysis of the Role of Media Coverage of the Vietnam War and its Effects on the American and Vietnamese People (1965–1975)
By: Salim Usman
Tags: News, Media Criticism, History, Vietnam War, Vietnam

An Analysis of the Role of Media Coverage of the Vietnam War and its Effects on the American and Vietnamese People (1965–1975) Salim Usman Dec 7, 2020·4 min read

During the later years of US intervention in Indochina, the American public opinion became staunchly against the war, mainly due to the fact that advances in video and audio recording, and daily broadcasts of the fighting on American television, brought the war to the living rooms of American families. As Leonard Ziedenberg said, it was the television that “projected into the American home night after night not only pictures of American troops dead and dying and killing, but of the terrible destruction American might was wrecking on a peasant society…”

During the Second World War, camera crews focused on the non combat areas and presented an upbeat side of the war, with even bad news delivered by a smiling reporter, in order to keep up the morale. In contrast, the news coverage of the Vietnam war was much more graphic, and focused on the bleaker aspects of a war that was becoming increasingly unwinnable for America. There is little doubt in the fact that nightly television coverage and photographs of the fighting, along with updates on the number of those killed and wounded had a profound impact on the American mind. The heavy dramatization of the coverage also made the viewers empathize with the soldiers more than ever before, which caused a public outcry against the war. Simultaneously, a comparatively smaller section of Americans watching the soldiers fighting felt that it was their duty to support the cause of freedom and democracy in Indochina, and anti-war advocates were seen as disloyal to the soldiers. This polarization in the American society has often led people to call Vietnam as the “most divisive American war since the Civil War”, and its aftereffects are still visible today. In addition to this, the strong opinions expressed in the media, mostly advocating against the war, combined with public outcry and student demonstrations, influenced U.S. policy makers and was an important driving force behind Nixon’s decision to pull out U.S. troops in 1969.

At the same time, the behavior of the correspondents and news agencies towards the Vietnamese was unjust and preferential. Americans were told that the Vietcong and the PAVN were pawns in the hands of the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union, who were conspiring to spread Communism, while the fact that the Vietnamese were fighting for reunification of their country was ignored. The correspondents in Vietnam had no knowledge of the Vietnamese culture and people, and thus viewed them with contempt and disdain. This led to a lot of focus on how the war was affecting America and Americans, with little to no attention being paid to what America was doing to the Vietnamese. This myopic and American-centric vision of the media, combined with the lucrative opportunity of showing the hellishness of the war, provided no incentive for the media to show the effect of the war on Vietnamese society and culture. This coverage further imbibed racial stereotypes and promoted incidents of violence against Asians, who were portrayed as “brutal, cruel and sinister beings”. These stereotypes were also prevalent in the American troops against their South Vietnamese allies, which fueled hatred and mistrust. Such coverage exposed the cultural bias and racism imbibed in the American ideology, while a great opportunity to understand the effects of warfare on civilian populations was lost.

The coverage of the Vietnam War by the American media and the resulting public outcry help us understand not only how media has the power to shape the minds of people and influence government policy, but is also an important example of how media, when focusing only on a certain portion of a story, while ignoring other important aspects, can prove to be counter-productive. While the portrayal of the war by the news agencies helped pave a way towards its end and imbibed in Americans antiwar sentiments, the prejudiced and preferential treatment the reporters and correspondents showed towards the Vietnamese exposed the dangers of media bias and ethnocentrism, which not only fueled mistrust between allies, but failed to show to the world the destruction brought about by American interventionism.