Vietnam Was Lost in the Living Rooms of America – Not on the Battlefields of Vietnam

...

gang raped and had their bodies mutilated (Rohn, 2014). Reports on the massacre by Canadian-American CBS news reporter Morley Safer and the iconic Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News showed graphic images and discussed how the American soldiers had lit the straw thatched roofs of the small colony of Cam Ne with Zippo lighters. This story had a profound impact and strengthened the public perception of Cronkite being reliable, credible and trustworthy. Reports by Cronkite, of incidents like the My Lai Massacre, made the U.S citizens feel like they could rely on Cronkite to report what is really happening in Vietnam. This especially applied given the American Government failure to report any of the major devastations caused by the U.S troops (Menard, 2012).

Widespread reporting of incidences such as the Tet Offensive and the My Lai Massacre had a significant adverse impact on the public perception of soldiers fighting in Vietnam. The portrayal of American soldiers as murderers resulted in them being mistreated and shunned upon their return, a phenomenon that was unique to returning Vietnam soldiers. German-American Vietnam War veteran John Podlaski, in his book ‘Cherries: A Vietnam War Novel’ argued that the depiction by the media of US soldiers as horrid monsters resulted in him, as a returning soldier, being verbally abused and spat on upon his return and him witnessing soldiers with missing limbs being told they deserved their fate. This personal story of a homecoming Vietnam veteran is consistent with the thousands other stories of veterans who were disrespected and scrutinized (Feist, 2012). Whether it was deserved or not, the role and power of the media in shaping community attitudes and behaviours was clearly significant.

The presentation of graphic footage by the media led to a significant loss of public support and fed an increase in protest activity, often led by high profile activists. Anti-war protestors were strategically on the air at peak times to get as much publicity as possible (Barringer,2016). The most famous of these protests was in 1967, when 100,000 protestors gathered around the Lincoln Memorial. This famous protest, included a guest appearance of the iconic African American civil right activist Martin Luther King Jr who expressed his disapproval of the war on moral grounds due to the ‘corruption’ and ‘murder’ of the innocent Vietnamese Men, women and children. After King Jr’s famous protest, there was a, “15% loss of support for the war among Americans” (History.com staff, 2009). Not surprisingly, of this 15% decline of public support, over 87% were African Americans (History.com staff, 2010). This staggering statistic presents the extent of how much King Jr appealed to the African American community. King Jr, not necessarily appealed to this community due to his own African American heritage, but due to his courageous involvement in the civil rights of African Americans (Garrow, 1983). Approximately 12 months later, another iconic African American figure, Muhammed Ali, lent support to Martin Luther King’s stance on the popular television program ‘Soul’. "They want me to go to Vietnam to shoot some black folks that never lynched me, never called me nigger, never assassinated my leaders" (cited in Gallagher 2014, p. 1). In Ali’s statement, he expresses his anger of King Jr’s assassination for standing up for his rights as an American, and his personal reasons for why the American government are wrong for sending men to Vietnam (Maycock, 2001). These two iconic figures show how loud a popular figure’s voice can be, particularly to a certain group or community.

In the final analysis, the media played a pervasive and powerful role in the Vietnam conflict in leading public opinion. For the first time, American families were able to witness traumatic events within hours of it occurring and largely uncensored. The media’s power in shaping perceptions and the course of the war was aided through the reporting of credible journalists such as Walter Cronkite. As the war progressed, the media was instrumental in feeding protest activity, diminishing public support for the war and cultivating hostility towards returning veterans. The capacity to report uncensored made the media a very powerful player in shaping public perceptions of the war and ultimately contributed to the US