BRINGING THE VIETNAM WAR INTO THE AMERICAN LIVING ROOM
TV NEWS BECOMING A MAJOR FORCE COINCIDED NOT ONLY WITH the Civil Rights Movement but also with the US military buildup in Vietnam. Network evening news programs expanded from fifteen minutes to half an hour in 1963; the first ground troops were sent to Indochina in 1965. The Vietnam War, therefore, became the first televised war. It also eventually became the least successful foreign war in American history.
Many media and political experts have argued that by bringing grisly images of battle into the American living room, TV news played a key role in turning the public against the Vietnam War and, ultimately, in hastening the end of that conflict. Although those observers are divided on whether ending the war was the right or wrong decision, they agree that TV showed the raw horror of war in ways that print journalism couldn’t. Violence, carnage, and human suffering were depicted in withering reality, while topics such as politics and strategy, which weren’t easily translated onto film, were downplayed. So TV viewers were left to conclude that the Vietnam War was costing American lives but wasn’t justified.
Numerous scholars and journalists have made this point. In the book The Vietnam Legacy, Edward Shils wrote, “Television gave the American people vivid images of certain aspects of the war in Vietnam which they could never have gotten from reading newspapers and periodicals. It made them see the war as a meaningless destruction of lives.” And veteran NBC commentator Edwin Newman concluded, “Television brought the Vietnam War into our living rooms on a nightly basis. They produced close-up, sensational images of war. American viewers saw the real experience of war transformed into theatrics on the twenty-one-inch screen. And they recoiled.”1
America’s Longest War
President Truman initiated US involvement in Vietnam in the early 1950s by sending military aid to the French colony. Truman and the men who entered the White House after him hoped to stop Vietnam from following China, its neighbor to the north, into communism. In 1954, Vietnam was divided in half—Ho Chi Minh’s communist government in the north was headquartered in Hanoi, and the prodemocracy government in the south was centered in Saigon. American involvement continued under both Republican and Democratic administrations, with President Eisenhower dispatching military advisers to South Vietnam and President Kennedy increasing the number of those advisers. President Johnson took an even stronger hand against the communists, committing the first troops to Indochina.
Vietnam moved onto most Americans’ radar in 1964. US military personnel announced that North Vietnamese patrol boats had fired on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, prompting Johnson to order a retaliatory strike that destroyed twenty-five boats and an oil depot. At LBJ’s request, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, assuring its support for “all necessary action” to defend US forces in Southeast Asia.
In 1965, Johnson ordered offensive bombing raids and sent ground troops, with the number of GIs in Vietnam reaching 175,000 by year’s end. Although the Americans were better equipped than the North Vietnamese, they weren’t familiar with the style of warfare practiced by the rebel Viet Cong guerrilla fighters. Time after time, the enemy evaded the Americans by melting into the jungle. Determined to defeat the communists, Johnson continued to escalate the war effort. By 1967, the number of US troops exceeded 500,000.
Ultimately, the United States paid a high price for fighting in Vietnam, with more than 58,000 Americans dying in the war. The number of Southeast Asians who died isn’t known, with estimates generally ranging from 1 million to 3 million.
The Most Powerful Medium in History
Although television existed during the Korean War, it hadn’t yet evolved into a major news medium. By the mid-1960s, however, more people were receiving their news from TV than from newspapers. And as the Vietnam War continued, that balance increasingly shifted toward television. By 1972, two out of three persons surveyed named television as their major news source.2
At the height of the war, the evening news programs were drawing huge numbers of viewers. ABC, CBS, and NBC attracted a combined audience of 35 million per night. One of the most committed of those viewers was President Johnson, who was so obsessed with television news that he had three TV sets in the Oval Office, one for each network.
Television correspondents in Vietnam, as well as their print counterparts, were free to go wherever they wanted and report whatever they found, for this was the first—and last—American war without military censorship. During the early years of fighting, journalists were such committed cheerleaders for the government that officials felt voluntary guidelines were fully adequate. Those rules identified fifteen categories of information, such as troop movements, that were off-limits. Violation of the rules meant a reporter would lose his or her accreditation, but that happened only four times during the entire war.
Through 1967, television coverage was overwhelmingly favorable to US policy. After the Tet Offensive in early 1968, however, TV’s portrayal of the war became much more critical.
Technological advances boosted the capabilities of TV news. New, lightweight cameras combined with jet air transportation and communication satellites meant that, for the first time, film from the front became a regular part of daily news coverage. Further advances meant that black-and-white images were transformed into color ones—blood could be seen in all its horrific brilliance.
Exposing the Horrors of War
From the moment ground troops arrived in Vietnam in 1965, television presented viewers with the most realistic battlefront images possible. TV defined the reality of war as, in a word, blood.
Typical was a 1967 piece in which NBC’s Greg Harris joined a platoon of GIs. “In the first twenty-six days of the present operation,” Harris reported on air, “this particular unit killed 270 VC while suffering only three wounded Americans.” Film then showed US soldiers charging into a village, bayonets drawn. Harris continued, “Today the Viet Cong lost the use of Cong Phu. Tomorrow they will lose the use of another village, then another.” As Harris wrapped up his report, the film showed the huts in the village burning.3
Dozens of such reports aired day after day, week after week. Each told of a unit burning a village, with film often showing dead bodies—many of them charred. NBC correspondent Jack Perkins said matter-of-factly during one report about a village being burned, “There was no discriminating one house from another. There did not need to be. The whole village was destroyed.”4
Although lurid images of dead and wounded Vietnamese soldiers and civilians often filled the screen, the most sought-after film was of blood flowing from the veins of American GIs. An NBC News vice president said at the time, “It’s not a Vietnamese war; it’s an American war in Asia. And that’s the only story the American audience is interested in.” He told his correspondents to concentrate on providing graphic images of US soldiers engaged in combat.5
© Associated Press/Henri Huet.
The bloody scenes were often featured as dramatic close-ups, with flames engulfing thatched roofs and black smoke billowing into the sky serving as backdrops. Typical was a heart-wrenching NBC sequence that showed a young GI screaming in anguish, “It hurts! It hurts!” as medics rushed him past the eye of the camera, his right leg reduced to a bloody stump.6
A Zippo Cigarette Lighter Ignites a Firestorm
The most controversial story of the early years of the war was by Morley Safer of CBS. One day in 1965, Safer was having coffee with some Marines when one of them asked if he’d like to join them on a field operation the next day. Safer jumped at the chance. After an amphibious carrier took them to Cam Ne, the men marched single file into the village and, in orderly fashion, burned every hut to the ground. The film was riveting. As the huts burst into flames, the Marines could be seen warning the Vietnamese peasants to run. But the film also showed that the warnings were useless because they were in English, while the confused looks on the women’s and children’s faces communicated that they understood only Vietnamese. The most poignant detail on the film, however, evolved from what the Marines used to ignite the thatched roofs: Zippo cigarette lighters.
When the film arrived in New York, network executives recognized the explosive nature of a report that depicted American soldiers cavalierly destroying a Vietnamese village by pulling lighters out of their pockets. Fred Friendly, the producer who’d piloted Edward R. Murrow through his battles with Joseph McCarthy ten years earlier, was awakened in the middle of the night. Friendly agreed to run the footage.
Safer’s narrative for the story began with a recitation of facts—“The day’s operation burned down 150 houses, wounded three women, killed one baby, and netted these four prisoners”—as Safer pointed to four elderly men. The correspondent, clearly shocked by the horror he’d witnessed, then added his own highly critical comments, “Today’s operation is the frustration of Vietnam in miniature.”7
Friendly didn’t go home after the “Zippo segment” aired. Instead, he went to his office and began answering the phone calls from hundreds of angry Americans who cursed CBS for portraying GIs as heartless killers.
Among those callers was President Johnson. The leader of the free world called Frank Stanton, president of CBS News. Johnson’s first question was as vivid as the film itself—“Frank, are you trying to fuck me?” Letting loose with the full fury of his monumental temper, Johnson continued, “Your boys just shat on the American flag.”8
Tet Stuns a Nation
The single most significant military action in the war erupted in late January 1968 when the North Vietnamese orchestrated the Tet Offensive. Named for the Lunar New Year holiday that coincided with it, this ambitious attack included simultaneous assaults on more than 100 sites—virtually every city, town, and military base in South Vietnam. The most dramatic action was by a Viet Cong suicide squad on the US Embassy in Saigon, killing five American soldiers. That action ended after a few hours, but heavy fighting continued throughout the south for another ten days.
Tet’s repercussions were enormous. On the communist side, following an initial advantage gained from the surprise factor, the ground taken was lost again. The offensive was, in short, a military failure. Because of the reaction in the United States, however, the Viet Cong could claim a major psychological victory. Tet shocked the American public, which had believed that success in Vietnam was imminent. The offensive seriously damaged the credibility of the Johnson administration, as the American people were suddenly impatient with this prolonged war. And in a presidential election year, the public had a direct means of expressing its dissatisfaction.
The role television news played in the Tet Offensive was momentous. Just as Vietnam was America’s first TV war, Tet was America’s first TV superbattle. The story had drama, suspense, and enormous public interest. With the communists acting offensively and taking the US military by surprise, the very future of democracy seemed to be on the line. Television news pulled out all the stops to cover the story.
The US Embassy was the focal point of coverage for three days, as an ongoing gun battle on the grounds provided a live-action bonanza for TV crews. Barrages of automatic weapon fire, scenes of men running for cover behind trees, and the lifeless bodies of two fallen GIs made for some of the most eye-popping news images in American military history—as exciting as a Hollywood blockbuster.
CBS and NBC quickly produced news specials on Tet. Alarmist in tone, the programs portrayed the offensive as a brutal bloodbath, with lengthy footage that was unmatched in its sheer volume of gore and carnage. The prime-time spectacles strongly reinforced the message that Tet was a devastating defeat for the United States.
At the same time that the networks filled their TV screens with portraits of havoc and an American military run amok, they also filled the ears of the public with words of pessimism. Jeff Gralnick of CBS told his audience, “The Viet Cong proved they could take and hold almost any area they chose.” ABC’s Joseph Harsch expressed a similar skepticism toward US forces when he reported, “Best estimates here are that the enemy has not yet, and probably never will, run out of the manpower to keep his effort going. It is the exact opposite of what American leaders have, for months, been leading us to expect.”9
In the midst of the crisis, it was understandable that the networks had initially reported incomplete or inaccurate information. Impossible to excuse, however, was the fact that ABC, CBS, and NBC all continued to portray Tet as a Viet Cong victory even after American officials provided indisputable evidence that the offensive had failed. Despite those facts, the networks neglected to set the record straight, allowing their hasty judgments to stand.
Later in 1968, field producer Jack Fern proposed that NBC undertake a three-part series showing that Tet had, in fact, been a military failure for the Viet Cong. Network executives rejected the proposal, saying such a series would only confuse viewers. The executives told Fern, “Tet was already established in the public’s mind as a defeat, and, therefore, it was an American defeat.”10
The Shot Felt Around the World
The TV image that, more than any other, burnt the brutalities of war into the consciousness of the American people was the filmed execution of a Vietnamese man on a Saigon street a few days after the Tet Offensive began.
NBC correspondent Howard Tuckner and his cameramen were standing on a street near the An Quang Pagoda, a center of government opposition, on the fateful morning. At the far end of the block, they saw several South Vietnamese soldiers with a prisoner wearing casual civilian clothes—plaid shirt, black shorts, no shoes. The soldiers walked toward the newsmen to present the prisoner to General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. The cameramen began filming the prisoner, showing that his hands were tied behind his back and that he’d been beaten.
The prisoner was marched down the street toward Loan, who then drew his snub-nosed .38 revolver. The prisoner stood three feet from the general, his eyes downcast. Without speaking to the man, Loan lifted his right arm and stretched it out straight as his index finger squeezed the trigger. There was the crack of a shot and a grimace on the prisoner’s face as the bullet slammed into his brain. The dead man’s legs folded under him. As he fell to the ground, blood spurt from his head.11
Tuckner cabled NBC in New York: “THIS STORY IS COMPETITIVE. CBS AND ABC WERE THERE BUT WE ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO HAVE FILM OF THE EXECUTION.” Tuckner ended the cable by flagging the fact that there could be “BLOOD SPRAYING OUT” of the prisoner’s head and then referring to the cameraman: “IF HE HAS IT ALL, IT’S STARTLING STUFF.”12
He had it all. He also had a huge audience. Because of the excitement that the Tet Offensive had created, the NBC audience watching that night’s program had jumped from 15 million to a staggering 20 million. And the color images of the execution made history: a televised death.
Robert Northshield, executive producer of the NBC Huntley-Brinkley Report, aired the film, cutting it immediately after the gunshot to spare viewers from the spurting blood. Northshield “went to black” as soon as the man hit the ground and then kept the screen empty for three seconds to provide a buffer between the stomach-wrenching image and the commercial that followed. Even so, the producer later acknowledged, “It was the strongest stuff American viewers had ever seen.”13
Tuckner’s narration was terse. He merely said who the men in the images were—although the victim wasn’t identified by name—and let the film roll. “Government troops had captured the commander of the Viet Cong commando unit. He was roughed up badly but refused to talk,” Tuckner said. “A South Vietnamese officer held the pistol taken from the enemy officer. The Chief of South Vietnam’s National Police Force, Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, was waiting for him.”14
© Associated Press/Eddie Adams.
Viewers were horrified. More than a thousand of them called NBC to complain that the film was in bad taste, particularly because it was aired during the early evening when children might be watching. Tuckner defended airing the chilling scene, saying, “The film showed, at a time when all eyes were on Saigon, that although the United States went over there ostensibly to keep South Vietnam free from communism and the communists were accused of atrocities, that a leading figure of the Saigon government killed a man in the street without a trial.”15
The film had a huge impact on the American public. Time magazine said, “That picture lodged in people’s memories” because it showed a South Vietnamese government official “cold-bloodedly executing” a thin, frightened man by “blowing the suspect’s brains out.” In his study of the impact of television on American society, NBC’s Edwin Newman said, “This film revolted the nation. ‘What was this war turning us into? What kind of people allowed such things to happen?’ Television pictures were disturbing. Public opinion was moving. Television caused the change.”16
Exposing the War as Unwinnable
The man who set the tone for TV coverage after the Tet Offensive was Walter Cronkite. The avuncular CBS anchor, with his kind and gentle manner, had shepherded the nation through many momentous events, including the 1963 Kennedy assassination. The anchor of the country’s most-watched news program, Cronkite had supported the American military’s effort in Vietnam during the early and mid-1960s. President Johnson, aware of Cronkite’s prestige and power, called him to the White House three times during 1966 and 1967 for private meetings.
But all of that was before Tet. Like other Americans, Cronkite was shocked by the first news reports of the communist offensive. On that fateful night, he was in the CBS newsroom in New York. As the news flashes from Saigon came clattering across the teletype, Cronkite ripped a page from the machine and screamed incredulously, “What the hell is going on?” Reading on to discover that communist forces had penetrated the US Embassy compound, he cried out the same refrain that people all across America would soon echo, “I thought we were winning this war!”17
Cronkite decided to find out what, indeed, was going on in Vietnam. It was a risky step, as it meant shedding his mantle of impartiality and sharing his personal impressions about the most important story of the era. But at this moment when the public was utterly confused, Cronkite decided it was his duty as the signature figure in the country’s largest network news operation to clarify the situation for his viewers.
So Cronkite went to Southeast Asia to interview soldiers and visit battle sites. Then the anchorman—the person that polls identified as the most trusted man in America—broadcast the most influential program of his life. Footage on Report from Vietnam by Walter Cronkite showed him wearing a steel helmet and flak jacket as he walked through the rubble of warfare.
Cronkite began, “Who won and who lost in the great Tet Offensive against the cities? I’m not sure. The Viet Cong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we.” Cronkite went on to predict other standoffs in the fighting, “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.”18
He then told America exactly where he, personally, stood on the future of the war. “It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out, then, will be to negotiate—not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.” His final expression that lingered on the screen combined pained acceptance with solid resolve.19
The country’s most influential newscaster had determined that, for the first time in two centuries, the United States wasn’t able to win a foreign war. Rather than continue to sacrifice human lives, he said, American officials should negotiate a peace settlement and leave Vietnam.
Cronkite’s assessment had unprecedented impact. For among the millions of Americans who put great stock in what the anchorman said was Lyndon Johnson. And when the program ended, the commander in chief said sadly, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the war.” Opinion polls confirmed Johnson’s fear. In one of the most dramatic shifts of public opinion in history, within six weeks after the Tet Offensive began, one American in five switched from supporting the Vietnam War to not supporting it. This meant that for the first time since the war began, a majority of Americans opposed the war.20
A month after Cronkite’s special, Johnson shocked the nation with a double-barreled announcement. He wouldn’t run for reelection, and he would begin reducing US participation in the war.
Observers have pointed to Cronkite’s program and Johnson’s subsequent decision to downsize the war as a clear example of the news media’s mighty power in shaping history. David Halberstam of the New York Times wrote, “Cronkite’s reporting changed the balance; it was the first time in American history a war had been declared over by an anchorman.”21
Because Cronkite’s assessment coincided with the news media’s portrayal of the Tet Offensive as a Viet Cong victory, the impact of the two events can’t be separated. What is clear, though, is that coverage changed radically. Before January 1968, editorial comments by TV journalists had run four to one in favor of US policy. But after that point, comments ran two to one against US policy.22
Contributing to the negative tone of the coverage were two high-profile revelations related to Vietnam. In November 1969, freelance journalist Seymour Hersh reported the My Lai massacre. During that event, which had occurred a year and a half earlier, American soldiers had destroyed an entire Vietnamese village, killing between 200 and 500 civilians. My Lai dealt a devastating blow to the US military, with Lieutenant William Calley being convicted of mass murder. The second revelation exposed the shocking realities of what forces had driven US policy toward Vietnam. In June 1971, the New York Times and Washington Post began reporting on secret government documents, known as the Pentagon Papers, that showed American military action often hadn’t been guided by humanitarian concern but by the political benefit of an administration fighting a war. Although the government attempted to block publication of the material, the US Supreme Court sided with the newspapers, saying the material didn’t endanger national security—it merely embarrassed the government.
Television News Helps End a War
The many journalists and scholars who argue that TV images were a major force in turning the American people against the war in Vietnam are on solid ground. The process began in the mid-1960s, when the blood of dead and wounded American GIs, as well as that of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, first began to flow across the television screen.
Then came Tet. Television images of the Viet Cong penetrating the US Embassy compound, with bodies of GIs lying in camera range, showed the American people that—regardless of what the politicians and military brass were saying—the United States wasn’t winning the war. And then viewers witnessed a South Vietnamese officer—a man fighting on our side—shooting an untried prisoner in cold blood. After those images and Walter Cronkite’s bleak assessment, American public opinion shifted. People were finally willing to say that they’d been supporting a hideous and inhuman war. And they refused to continue.
For a book with the goal of documenting the impact that the news media have had on American history, it’s sufficient to establish that TV coverage of the Vietnam War played a key role in bringing the fighting to an end. When the discussion includes not only a divisive war but also how the news media should cover future conflicts, however, that discussion seems incomplete without taking the final precarious step of questioning whether TV news hastening the end of the Vietnam War was a positive or a negative contribution to history.
Both journalists and government officials have identified the central issue. Nationally syndicated columnist Bob Greene wrote, “The argument can be made that any war—even World War II—shown in the gory, close-up way in which television showed Vietnam, is destined to lose the public’s support; that once they have seen the videotape, all they will want is out.” Dean Rusk, who served as secretary of state in the 1960s, made the same point, saying that the impact of Vietnam battle scenes on the ordinary citizen every day was powerful. “One can reflect upon what might have happened in World War II if Dunkirk had been on television,” Rusk said. “So I think we need to do a good deal of thinking about whether or not an armed conflict can be sustained for very long if the worst aspects of it are going to be reflected on television every day. There may have to be certain kinds of censorship.”23
When television news brought the “worst aspects” of the Vietnam War into the American living room, it was doing its job. As long as a free press remains fundamental to the democratic form of government, the news media’s accurate depiction of reality—no matter how vivid or horrifying that reality may be—is a positive contribution to that country. TV news showed the American people exactly what their military was doing halfway around the world, and, knowing that information, the people chose not to continue.
At some point, the men and women elected to positions of national leadership in this country may succeed—as Rusk suggested—in limiting what freedom of the press means. But until that loathsome day, there’s no question that reporting the realities of war is both the duty and the responsibility of the American news media. If the people of the United States are willing to send men and women into battle, they also must be willing to acknowledge that death, destruction, and human suffering are byproducts of that decision.
