No More Learning

Television analyst Edward Jay Epstein formulates the standard view as follows:
Over the past 10 years, almost nightly, Americans have witnessed the war in Vietnam, on television. Never before in history has a nation allowed its citizens to view uncensored scenes of combat, destruction and atrocities in their living rooms, in living color. Since television has become the principal-and most believed- source of news for most Americans, it is generally assumed that the constant exposure of this war on television was instrumental in shaping public opinion. It has become almost a truism, and the standard rhetoric oftelevision executives, to say that television, by showing the terrible truth of the war, caused the disillusionment of Americans with the war. . . . This has also been the dominant view of those governing the Nation during the war years. . . . Depending on whether the appraisal has come from hawk or dove, television has thus been either blamed or applauded for the disil- lusionment of the American public with the war. 85
There have been several studies of the matter, suggesting a rather different picture. We will return to some of these issues in discussing the coverage of the Tet offensive, but we should observe that there are some rather serious questions about the standard formulations. Sup- pose that some Soviet investigators were to conduct an inquiry into coverage of the war in Afghanistan to determine whether Pravda should be blamed or applauded for the disillusionment of the Soviet public with the war? Would we consider such an inquiry to be mean- ingful without consideration of both the costs and the justice of the venture?
Epstein notes an obvious "logical problem" with the standard view: for the first six years of television coverage, from 1962 and increasingly through 1967, "the American public did approve of the war in Vietnam" according to polls. Furthermore, in a 1967 Harris poll for Newsweek" "64 per cent of the nation wide sample said that television's coverage made them more supportive of the American effort, and only 26 per cent said that it had intensified their opposition," leading the journal to conclude that "TV has encouraged a decisive majority of viewers to support the war. "
Epstein's review ofhis and other surveys oftelevision newscasts and commentary during this period explains why this should have been the case. "Up until 1965," he writes, "the network anchor men seemed
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unanimous in support of American objectives in Vietnam," and most described themselves as "hawks" until the end, while the most notable "dove," Walter Cronkite, applauded "the courageous decision that Communism's advance must be stopped in Asia" in 1965 and later endorsed the initial U. S. commitment "to stop Communist aggression wherever it raises its head. " In fact, at no time during the war or since has there been any detectable departure from unqualified acceptance of the U. S. government propaganda framework; as in the print media, controversy was limited to tactical questions and the problem of costs, almost exclusively the cost to the United States.
The network anchormen not only accepted the framework of inter- pretation formulated by the state authorities, but also were optimistic about the successes achieved in the U. S. war of defense against Viet- namese aggression in Vietnam. Epstein cites work by George Baily, who concludes: "The results in this study demonstrate the combat reports and the government statements generally gave the impression that the Americans were in control, on the offense and holding the initiative, at least until T et of 1968," a picture accepted by the network anchormen. Television "focused on [the] progress" of the American ground forces, supporting this picture with "film, supplied by the Pentagon, that showed the bombing of the North" and "suggesting that the Americans were also rebuilding South Vietnam"-while they were systematically destroying it, as could be deduced inferentially from scattered evidence for which no context or interpretation was provided. NBC's "Huntley- Brinkley Report" described "the American forces in Vietnam as 'builders' rather than destroyers," a "central truth" that "needs under- scoring. "
What made this especially deceptive and hypocritical was the fact, noted earlier, that the most advanced and cruel forms of devastation and killing-such as the free use of napalm, defoliants, and Rome plows-were used with few constraints in the South, because its popu- lation was voiceless, in contrast with the North, where international publicity and political complications threatened, so that at least visible areas around the major urban centers were spared. 86
As for news coverage, "all three networks had definite policies about showing graphic film of wounded American soldiers or suffering Viet- namese civilians," Epstein observes. "Producers of the NBC and ABC evening-news programs said that they ordered editors to delete exces- sively grisly or detailed shots," and CBS had similar policies, which, according to former CBS News president Fred W. Friendly, "helped shield the audience from the true horror of the war. " "The relative bloodlessness of the war depicted on television helps to explain why
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only a minority in the Lou Harris-Newsweek poll said that television increased their dissatisfaction with the war"; such coverage yielded an impression, Epstein adds, of "a clean, effective technological war," which was "rudely shaken at Tet in 1968. " As noted earlier, NBC withdrew television clips showing harsh treatment of Viet Cong prison- ers at the request of the Kennedy administration.
Throughout this period, furthermore, "television coverage focused almost exclusively on the American effort. " There were few interviews with GVN military or civilian leaders, "and the Vietcong and North Vietnamese were almost nonexistent on American television news- casts. "
There was one famous exception to the sanitizing of the war, an August 5, 1965, CBS report by Morley Safer showing U. S. Marines burning huts in the village of Cam Ne with cigarette lighters, which elicited "a semiofficial campaign" by the Pentagon "to discredit the television story and vilify the correspondent as 'unpatriotic. ''' But surveys of television newscasts by Epstein and Wisconsin Professor Lawrence Lichty show that "instances shown on TV of American brutality toward the South Vietnamese, such as Cam Ne, 'could be counted on one hand' [Lichty]," "even though hundreds of South Vietnamese villages were destroyed during this period. " "The Cam Ne story is famous for being the exception to the rule. "
Returning soldiers told a different story, and it became increasingly clear, although not through the medium of television, that the war was bloody and brutal, leading to "disillusionment"-and among a large sector of the general population, increasingly "out of control," a much stronger and more appropriate reaction.
But, Epstein continues, "the televised picture of gradual progress in the war was abruptly shattered by the Communist [Tet] offensive" in January-February 1968, when the military lost its "control over the movements of the press," who could step outside their hotels and find "themselves willy-nilly in the midst of bloody fighting. " For this brief moment, correspondents sent on-the-spot reports that were aired in place of "the usual carefully edited view of an orderly, controlled war," and the policy of "shield[ing] American viewers from the grisly close- ups of wounded Americans, body bags and death" briefly collapsed, though newscasts continued to be edited in home offices as "too strong," in the words of NBC producer Robert Northshield. This cov- erage convinced Walter Cronkite that the war had become "a bloody stalemate," in a controversial report to which we will return.
The Tet offensive convinced U. S. elites that the war was becoming too costly to the United States, and the government shifted toward the
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policy of "Vietnamization," large-scale massacre operations to destroy the indigenous resistance and its civilian base, expansion of the war in Laos and Cambodia, and the commencement of negotiations with North Vietnam. "Accordingly, the networks again changed the focus of their coverage, this time from the battlefields in Vietnam to the negotia- tion tables in Paris. . . . The 'story' was now the negotiations, not the fighting," Northshield explained, adding that "combat stories seemed like a contradiction and would confuse the audience. " "Similar deci- sions were made at the other networks," Epstein adds, as all "altered their coverage in late 1969 from combat pieces to stories about the 'Vietnamization' of the war" and the negotiations in Paris. The post-
Tet accelerated pacification campaign~ one of the most crucial and murderous operations in the U. S. war against South Vietnam, received little attention.
Epstein believes that "there is a marked difference between the coverage of the formative years of the war (1962-1967) and the later years (when the antiwar movement was at its height). " "Up until 1968, television coverage was controlled to a large extent by the American military, and generally it reflected a controlled American initiative which seemed to be winning the countryside and decimating the Viet- cong. The searchlight rarely focused on related questions, such as the sufferings of Vietnamese civilians. " During the T et offensive, the focus changed to Americans "shown on the defensive, endangered and help- lessly frustrated," then to "the story of the American withdrawal" as "negotiations began at the end of 1968. " The differences, however, are misleading. Apart from the live coverage during the Tet offensive, there is very little departure from the principle that the war must be viewed from the standpoint determined by official Washington doctrine-a
standpoint that broadened in scope after Tet, as tactical disagreements arose within elite circles.
In his survey of network newscasts from 1965 through the January 1973 peace treaty, Daniel Hallin reaches similar conclusions. Until the Tet offensive, television coverage was "lopsidedly favorable to Ameri- can policy in Vietnam," well beyond even the "remarkably docile" print media. Like Epstein, he notes the "dramatic" change after Tet, "part of a larger change, a response to as well as a cause of the unhappiness with the war that was developing at many levels, from the halls of the Pentagon, to Main Street, U. S. A. and the fire bases of Quang Tri province"-and, much more crucially, the unhappiness that had be- come quite significant by 1968 among business elites, leading to the changes in U. S. government policy already discussed. "Before Tet, editorial comments by television journalists}. :an nearly four to one in
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favor ofadministration policy; after Tet, two to one against," reflecting divisions in the "establishment itself. " He quotes New York Times editor Max Frankel, who said in an interview that "we're an establish- ment institution, and whenever your natural constituency changes, then naturally you will too. " The same was true of television, and it is hardly surprising-and quite in accord with the propaganda model-that its fervent loyalty to the administration changed when "the establishment bastards have bailed out," as Lyndon Johnson put it bitterly after the "Wise Men" advised him in March 1968 to abandon hope of military victory and to de-escalate the conflict, in the wake of the Tet offen- sive. 8 ?
Television typically presented events in terms of "a kind of morality play, . . . a dramatic contrast between good, represented by the Ameri- can peace offensive [in 1966], and evil, represented by Hanoi. " Report- ing was relatively bloodless, focusing on the successes of "the 'good guys': American boys in action," regularly depicted as "brave men," "the greatest men in the world," "heroes," exuding competence, hu- manity, and high morale as they fight against "Communist aggression" in the "battle for democracy," and "win hearts and minds" by caring for sick and injured civilians after a village "was burned and blasted to death"-properly, because ammunition had been found there, which "was enough proof of its being used by the Vietcong" (Greg Harris, NBC-TV, Oct. 27, 1967). The issue of racism "was apparently too sensitive to touch," Hallin adds, noting that he found no "comment on the hostility that many American soldiers felt towards all Vietnamese, . . . a prominent theme in veterans' recollections of the war. "
The focus of coverage was the Americans: soldiers bravely defending Vietnam, medics caring for the wounded, pacification officials rebuild- ing after the damage for which Communist terror bore responsibility. "Our South Vietnamese" were virtually ignored, with virtually nothing on political, economic, or social affairs, and "the peasant figured in the news mainly as a victim and prize of the conflict. " The political opposi- t. ion in Vietnam was portrayed with considerable hostility, "like the antiwar movement at home. " They were "forces of anarchy . . . on the march" (Walter Cronkite, CBS-TV, Mar. 31, 1966). The utterly fraudu- lent elections were portrayed as a triumph as democracy, courageously carried out in defiance of the disruptive attacks of "Vietcong terror- ists. "88
Civilian casualties were downplayed, or regarded as unavoidable side consequences of "a job that had to be done," raising no moral question. Observing an air strike on a village of "unabashed" Viet Cong support- ers after a column of American soldiers had drawn fire, NBC's Jack
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Perkins commented: "There was no discriminating one house from another. There couldn't be, and there did not need to be. The whole village had turned on the Americans, so the whole village was being destroyed," as is only right and just. In a follow-up on the Cam Ne incident, Dan Rather offers a comment that Hallin cites as an example of "a muckraking tone," the harshest he presents: the marines are holding Cam Ne
by force, not through the pacification program . . . [which] hasn't taken hold in Cam Ne. And until it does take hold here and a lot ofother places in South Vietnam, nobody can feel very good about this dirty little war.
In short, as long as there is still resistance to American violence, we cannot feel good about proceeding with our necessary chores; such comments as these presumably account for Rather's reputation among the "doves" as a courageous opponent of the war, and among the "hawks" as a dangerous leftist. Walter Cronkite reported "an urgent plea from the Vietcong for medical and surgical supplies" to the Inter- national Red Cross, "an indication that our bombing raids and infantry sweeps are taking a heavy roll of all kinds of Red equipment. "89
Reporting of civilian casualties rose from 1966 to a peak in early 1968, then declined sharply as the United States turned to the murderous accelerated pacification campaign, which Hallin does not discuss, pre- sumably because it was largely ignored by television, which had shifted attention to the negotiating tables in Paris in accordance with Washing- ton priorities. The coverage rose again in 1972, when casualties could be attributed to a North Vietnamese offensive and the U. S. "response. " In a 1971 CBS documentary entitled "The Changing War in Indo- china," Charles Collingwood reported the progress of the pacification campaign in Kien Hoa Province in the Mekong Delta-"once an NLF stronghold," Hallin observes. This province had been the target of Operation Speedy Express in early 1969, one of the most brutal Ameri- can operations of the war in an area that had been organized under NLF control with no known North Vietnamese presence, conquered through the "awesome firepower" ofthe Ninth Division. This included air strikes using napalm, high explosives, and anti-person~el bombs, B-52 bombing, and artillery shelling "around the clock" at a level that "it is impossible to reckon," with armed helicopters "scouring the landscape from the air night and day" and accounting for "many and perhaps most of the enemy kills"-about 11,000 according to the U. S. command, with 748 weapons captured, a fair indication of who was
THI! INDOCHINA WARS (I): VIETNAM 205
killed. 9() Collingwood was pleased to observe progress in pacification, although there was still "Indian country" beyond. "This is almost like St. Louis on the move into the frontier," his companion, a U. S. govern- ment adviser replied, in a reference that is more accurate than he probably knew. 91
In contrast to the heroic and humane image ofthe American soldiers defending democracy, the NLF and North Vietnamese were portrayed in "an almost perfectly one-dimensional image . . . as cruel, ruthless and fanatica1. " Of twelve positive comments by journalists that he found throughout the war, Hallin remarks, "10 concerned the effectiveness of enemy forces: this was the only element of television's image of the enemy that changed substantially" in the course of the pOSt-Tet shift, mirroring establishment qualms about the prospects for the success of American arms. "What did not change was the dark picture of evil. " When U. S. forces burned villages, this was a necessity because they provided cover and support for the Viet Congo The results of B-52 saturation bombing were a "tragedy of war. " But when a North Viet- namese artillery shell hit an orphanage in An Hoa in October 1970, ABC's George Watson commented with horror: "No one was prepared for the massacre, the irrational murder that the North Vietnamese inflicted on An Hoa. " Although civilian casualties were overwhelmingly the result of U. S. firepower, attribution of responsibility by television was weighted by a 10 to 7 ratio to the account of the enemy; its "calculated policy of terror" contrasted with the unfortunate but legiti- mate side-effects of U. S. operations. Even military operations of the enemy were "terrorism. " Reporting on a Viet Cong ambush of an American patrol, ABC's Peter Jennings recounted "another of those small but {and here he paused a moment for dramatic effect] harrowing VC butcheries" (October, 1965). The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were portrayed as "savage," "brutal," "murderous," "fanatical," "sui- cidal," "halfcrazed," mere vermin in areas that were "Communist in- fested" or "Vietcong infested," and thus had to be cleansed by the American liberators. 92
The style and technique are familiar in state propaganda of all varieties.
Overall, Hallin concludes from his survey, television never veered from the official interpretation of the war as "a struggle to defend democracy against aggression. " In the early years, it was taken for granted that
we would surely win, not only because we were more powerful but because the right was clearly on our side. T e1evision held this view
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strongly, perhaps more strongly than the public itself. It didn't work out that way, and eventually television brought the bad news. But it never explained why: it never reexamined the as- sumptions about the nature of the war it had helped to propagate in the early years. So to the public, the bad news must have seemed nearly as incomprehensible as an earlier "American de- feat" in Asia: the "loss" of China.
Attribution of the American failure by the public to "treason" or "lack of American will" caused by the failure of the media to support our just cause with sufficient fervor is, therefore, "hardly surprising. "93
This may well explain why the public has apparently been willing to accept the tales about media treachery. But among the educated elites, the explanation may lie elsewhere: in a totalitarian cast of mind that regards even the actual level of media subservience to the state as inadequate and a threat to order and privilege by the "forces of anarchy . . . on the march. "
5. 5. SOME CRUCIAL EVENTS OF THE WAR
5. 5. 1. The Tonkin Gulf incident
By mid-I964, there was a growing consensus among Vietnamese in favor of a negotiated political settlement, while the United States was maneuvering with increasing desperation to evade what internal docu- ments describe as "premature negotiations. " The reason, as frankly explained, was that the United States was politically isolated, in opposi- tion to the NLF, the non-Communist opposition, and even the gener- als. It was therefore regarded as necessary to expand the war to the North to "obtain [the DRV'sJ cooperation in bringing an end to the Viet Cong insurgency" and to "persuade or force the DRV to stop its aid to the Viet Cong and use its directive powers to make the Viet Cong desist" (Ambassador Maxwell Taylor). Intelligence, meanwhile, con- cluded that "the basic elements of Communist strength in South Viet- nam remain indigenous. "94-
U. S. -run military operations against North Vietnam began on Feb- ,-
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ruary I, 1964 (OPLAN-34A), using South Vietnamese and "third-coun- try" mercenaries, "presumably mostly Nationalist Chinese," according to Kahin. These operations were officially "designed to result in sub- stantial destruction, economic loss, and harassment. "95 On July 30-31, Saigon Navy vessels attacked North Vietnamese islands, eliciting an official DRV protest to the International Control Commission on July 31. The U. S. destroyer Maddox, conducting an electronic espionage operation in that general area, entered the twelve-mile zone regarded by North Vietnam as its territorial waters on August 2. The Maddox was challenged by North Vietnamese patrol boats, fired "warning shots," and was hit by a single bullet in the ensuing battle, in which the patrol boats were damaged or destroyed by the destroyer and U. S. aircraft. On August 3, Secretary of State Dean Rusk sent a (secret) cable to Ambassador Taylor, stating that "We believe that present Op Plan 34 A activities are beginning to rattle Hanoi, and Maddox incident is directly related to their efforts to resist these activities. " The Maddox was returned to the area along with the destroyer TurnerJoy on August
3, and on August 3 and 4 Saigon naval vessels bombarded North Viet- namese coastal facilities, "quite possibly one that the destroyer's elec- tronic surveillance had activated and located," Kahin observes. There was some indication that the U. S. destroyers might have come under attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on August 4, although Captain John Herrick of the Maddox was unsure, and radioed that reports "appear very doubtful" and that there were "No actual sightings by Maddox," recommending "complete evaluation before any further ac- tion. " Subsequent evidence indicates that almost certainly no attack took place. 96
On August 5, President Johnson publicly denounced the "open ag- gression on the high seas against the United States of America" by the North Vietnamese, while the DRV and China stated that "the so-called second Tonkin Gulf incident of 4 August never occurred" (Chinese government statement). On August 5, U. S. planes bombed North Viet- namese instalJations and destroyed North Vietnamese patrol boats. After testimony by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in which he
falsely claimed that the Maddox "was operating in international waters, was carrying out a routine patrol of the type we carry out all over the world at all times," Congress passed a resolution authorizing the presi- dent to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression" (416 to a in the House, Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening alone in opposi- tion in the Senate). This August 7 resolution was subsequently ex-
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ploited as the basis for the escalation of the U. S. attack against Viet- nam. 97
"The Gulf of Tonkin incident," Hallin observes, "was a classic of Cold War news management. . . . On virtually every important point, the reporting of the two Gulf of Tonkin incidents . . . was either misleading or simply false"-and in accordance with the needs of the U. S. executive at that crucial moment.
The New York Times had re- ported sabotage missions against the North as recently as July 23, and reported Hanoi's August 2 protest of an attack on North Vietnamese villages by Laotian Air Force planes, but neither the Times nor the Washington Post mentioned these facts "either at the time of the inci- dents or in the weeks that followed, aside from inconspicuous sidebars on Hanoi's 'allegations' [which were accurate, but dismissed] and a passing reference" in a column by James Reston. The reporting was "objective" in that it correctly reported U. S. government statements, raising no question about them, presenting no relevant background, and marginally citing Communist denials while proceeding to report the events as Washington wished them to be perceived. 98
In subsequent weeks, the Times published a number of brief refer- ences to what was "charged" or "asserted" in the generally accurate reports from North Vietnam, which were rejected and dismissed by reporters while front-page stories and headlines presented the false Washington version as fact, with much speculation about Hanoi's mo- tives in sending a few patrol boats to attack the mighty U. S. Seventh Fleet. The relevant background continued to be ignored or buried with marginal references in back pages. The criticism by Senator Morse was barely mentioned, and dismissed. There was no hint of administration doubts that the August 4 incident had even taken place. 99
The newsweeklies adhered still more rigidly to the government prop- aganda line, even providing vivid and dramatic accounts of the August 4 incident, which apparently never took place. The accurate criticism by Senators Gruening and Morse received a few lines, dismissed as "predictable" responses by the "irascible" Morse. There was no inter- est in their charge that the Tonkin Gulf resolution had been predated, also dismissed by the Times without inquiry. North Vietnamese and Chinese reactions were dismissed as "bluster" by Communists who "boiled with hatred and hostility toward the U. S. " (Newsweek) and "propaganda blasts" (U. S. News & World Report). None ofthe weeklies considered the possibility that U. S. actions might have provoked the August 2 incident, or that there were doubts in Washington about the August 4 attack, although some of the relevant facts had been briefly
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noted (e. g. , Tim~ July 31, noting missions inside North Vietnam by parachuted sabotage teams). The U. S. government version was simply adopted as unquestioned truth, with no further discussion or inquiry necessary. IOO
There were ample grounds at the time for suspicion about the U. S. government version. The foreign press was able to see that serious questions arose. Le Monde presented public statements on all sides and an analysis of what the public record indicated. "Neither the Times nor the Pose made any such analysis of the record," simply taking the false Washington version to be correct and dismissing the accurate Communist "allegations" with a bare mention. 101 In London, the New Statesman covered the U. S. and Chinese versions, including the (accurate) Chinese account of the U. S. -Saigon actions that preceded the incidents and the charge that the first was provoked by Washington while the second never occurred, and concluding that "the incidents in Vietnam do not seem quite as simple as the initial headlines indicated" (a substantial understatement). In the United States, the left-wing National Guardian, with five major articles, and I. F. Stone's Weekly provided the most extensive, careful, and accurate account of the events. In contrast to the fevered rhetoric of the main- stream newsweeklies, the National Guardian simply described the facts that were available, asking whether the August 2 "skirmish" had been provoked and whether the "alleged" August 4 incident had taken place. The relevant background and Communist versions were accurately presented, with appropriate questions raised. Wayne Morse's commentary was given ample coverage, as were South Viet- namese General Ky's statements on sabotage missions in North Viet- nam. I. F. Stone's Weekly also reported the facts accurately, adding relevant background ignored by the major media. 102
In summary, the national media, overcome by jingoist passion, failed to provide even minimally adequate coverage of this crucial event, although appropriate skepticism would have been aroused in the mind of the reader of the foreign or "alternative" media, or the reader with the sophistication to treat the media as a disinfonnation system disguis- ing a reality that can perhaps be ascertained with sufficient energy and dedication. The Pentagon Papers analyst describes these events as "an important firebrea. k," noting that "the Tonkin Gulf Resolution set U. S. public support for virtually any action. "103
The willingness of the media to serve as a vehicle for government propaganda helped impel the country toward what they were later to regard as "the tragedy" of Vietnam. The reaction of Congress and the
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public laid the basis for the outright invasion of early 1965, providing suppon for the planners who were secretly concerned that the NLF was continuing "to seek a political settlement favorable to the communists" through the device of "neutralism" and "a coalition government" (Maxwell Taylor, Aug. ro, 1964), and who warned about "Saigon and Vientiane hanky panky with Reds" (John McNaughton, October 1964)-that is, moves toward a political settlement-in accordance with the NLF program as described by intelligence: "to seek victory through a 'neutralist coalition' rather than by force of arms. "I04 When the United States extended the war in early 1965 to try to salvage its position in the South, the media continued to offer total support, in accordance with "the guiding principle of American foreign policy since 1945" as outlined by the distinguished liberal commentator of the New York Times James Reston,
that no state shall use military force or the threat of military force to achieve its political objectives. And the companion of this principle has been that the United States would use its influence and its power, when necessary and where it could be effective, against any state that defied this principle,
which was "at stake in Vietnam," where "the United States is now challenging the Communist effort to seek power by the more cunning technique of military subversion. "lo5
In the Orwellian world of American journalism, the attempt to seek a political settlement by peaceful means is the use of "military force," and the use of military force by the United States to block a political settlement is a noble action in defense of the "guiding principle" that the use of military force is illegitimate.
The United States then proceeded to fight a long and brutal war to try to achieve its objectives in Vietnam, demolishing much of Indo- china in the process and leaving a legacy that may never be overcome. Finally, in January 1973, the United States formally accepted a peace treaty that was virtually identical with the Vietnamese consensus it overturned by violence in 1964, except that by that time, the indige- nous NLF had been effectively demolished and little remained in In- dochina outside of North Vietnam, laying the basis for North Vietnamese domination of Indochina, exactly as had been pr~dicted, long before, by "the wild men in the wings. " The media bear a major responsibility for these tragic events, coverage of the Tonkin Gulf incident with its congressional "blank check" for further aggression serving as a notable example. io.
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5. 5. 2. The Tet offensive
Media coverage of the Tet offensive has been the centerpiece of the critique of the media for "losing the war" by their incompetent report- ing and their anti-government bias reflecting their passion for confront- ing authority. The authoritative "proof' of this contention was provided in the two-volume Freedom House study by Peter Braestrup. Conducted over a six-year period with a wide range of distinguished participants and consultants, and support acknowledged from some two dozen corporations and labor unions, this study was hailed as a "monu- mental" work by Don Oberdorfer in a WashinglOn Post magazine cover story on the tenth anniversary of the offensive, with the title: "Tet: The Turning Point: How a 'Big Event' on Television Can Change Our Minds. " Professor John P. Roche, of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, "intellectual-in-residence" for the Johnson administration, described the Freedom House study as "one of the major pieces of investigative reporting and first-rate scholarship
of the past quarter century," a "meticulous case-study of media incom- petence, if not malevolence. " In a relatively critical discussion in the Times's Sunday book review, Edwin Diamond praises this "painstak- ingly thorough study of how the Vietnam war was presented to the American public by its leading image makers," a "highfalutin' epis- temological quest" by a "conscientious . . . reporter-analyst" that raises profound questions about "how do we know what we know," revealing "the biases introduced by standard journalistic assumptions and organi- zational practices" that contributed to undermining the U. S. position in Vietnam among the general public and Congress. Similarly, Charles Mohr reports that in a conference of "aging hawks and doves" on the tenth anniversary of the Tet offensive at the University of North Caro- lina, "Journalism came in for some strong criticism and only a rather muted defense. " The criticism was by Braestrup, who "expounded gently the theme of his recent book," Big Story, and the hawks in attendance, "while some of the reporters there demurred only softly. "
The study is regularly cited by historians, without qualification, as the standard work on media reporting of the Tet offensive, "in some re- spects as important as the battle itself," here "analysed in depth" (R. B. Smith). 106
Oberdorfer too accepts the conclusions of the study as proven: it was the" 'Big Event' on television" that changed our minds about the war. The only commentary he cites, even obliquely, accepts this judgment (Roche and others unnamed). Within the mainstream more generally, it is assumed with little question that this remarkable scholarly contri-
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bution made its case, though one may debate whether it revealed "ma- levolence" or deeper problems of "standard journalistic assumptions and organizational practices," reflecting perhaps the "adversarial stance" of the media with regard to established power.
Braestrup claims to have shown that the reporting of the Tet offen- sive is "an extreme case" cf the "unsatisfactory" performance of the media: "Rarely has contemporary crisis-journalism turned out, in retro- spect, to have veered so widely from reality" by presenting <<a portrait of defeat for the allies"-"allies" being the term regularly used to refer to the U. S. invaders, the local forces they organized, and the largely mercenary forces they introduced to support U. S. military operations in Indochina, and a term chosen to exploit the favorable connotations provided by World War II, when "the allies" fought "the Axis. " "To have portrayed such a setback for one side [them] as a defeat for the other {us]-in a major crisis abroad--cannot be counted as a triumph for American journalism," which "shouted that the patient was dying, then weeks later began to whisper that he somehow seemed to be recovering-whispers apparently not heard amid the clamorous domes- tic reaction to the initial shouts," with television the worst offender. The whispers began "about late February," he asserts. These joumalis~ tic failures, Braestrup concludes, reflect "the more volatile journalistic style-spurred by managerial exhortation or complaisance-that has become so popular since the late 196050," accompanied with "an often mindless readiness to seek out conRict, to believe the worst of the government or of authority in general, and on that basis to divide up the actors on any issue into the 'good' and the 'bad. ' "The "bad actors" include the U. S. forces in Vietnam, the "military-industrial complex," and the CIA, among others, while "the good" in the eyes of the media are presumably the Communists, who, Braestrup argues sardonically throughout, were consistently overpraised and protected. The prospect, he foresees, "is for a continuation of the current volatile styles, always with the dark possibility that, if the managers do not themselves take action, then outsiders-the courts, the Federal Communications Com- mission, or Congress-will seek to apply remedies of their own," a proposal taken up in Roche's call fOT a congressional inquiry and the subsequent warnings of the Trilateral Commission, cited earlier (Big
Story, I, 705ft". )
The Braestrup-Freedom House thesis has two essential components:
(I) coverage of the Tet offensive illustrates media incompetence and their "adversarial stance"j (2) by their portrayal of an American victory as a defeat, the media bear responsibility for the loss of American resolve and the subsequent American defeat in Vietnam. It is the sec-
THE 11<ODOCHINA WARS (I): VIETNAM 213
ond component of the thesis that carries the dramatic impact, and that has permitted it to set much of the agenda for subsequent discussion of the fourth estate and the dangers that its new-found power and "sixties' style" of "mindless" hatred of authority pose for the very survival of free institutions and democracy.
The first component of the thesis is commonly accepted even by those who deny the second. Thus, rejecting "the stab-in-the-back the- sis," George Herring nevertheless observes: "That the media was hos- tile to the war and to Johnson seems clear, and much of the reporting of Tet was misleading"; these "distortions of the media" may have contributed to "growing popular discontent" with the war and "public anxiety," Herring adds, but these were not the operative factors in Johnson's decision to de-escalate and seek negotiations after Tet. tO?
An analysis of the facts and the argument demonstrates that neither component of the Freedom House thesis is tenable. The second, as we shall see, is conceded in the Freedom House study to be false with regard to public opinion, and the straw at which they then grasp will plainly not bear the weight. As for the first component, on the narrow question of professional competence in reporting the facts available under trying and confused circumstances, the performance of the media was acceptable if not outstanding, and compares quite favorably to the internal reporting of the American military authorities and U. S. intelligence, insofar as these are available. But when we turn to broader questions of the sort discussed earlier-that is, if we evaluate the media
by the standards that we would properly apply to reporting, say, on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan-we see that indeed they can be faulted in precisely the terms anticipated by the propaganda model. The very example selected as providing the strongest grounds for their accusa- tions by Freedom House and other critics from the jingoist right wing of the political spectrum actually happens to demonstrate the precise opposite of what is alleged-namely, it provides yet another striking illustration of the subservience of the media to the state propaganda system. lOS
The Freedom House study itself provides ample documentation to establish these conclusions, and to refute its own specific allegations point by point. Given the major role that this study and the thesis it allegedly established has played in recent ideology, we will give some attention to the chasm that lies between its interpretation and summar- ies, on the one hand, and the documentary record that it (in part) presents, on the other. 109 The comments and summaries often seriously misrepresent the contents of the documents described or are outright falsifications. The analysis, laced with bitter sarcasm throughout, is
2I4 MANUf'ACT\lI. lN<; CONSENT
thoroughly undermined when compared with the actual documents. When the countless errors and careless and inaccurate comments are corrected, nothing remains of the Freedom House case. The sardonic reference to "straw man journalism," "CBS exclusives" and the like, referring to alleged misdeeds of the media, is misplaced; case by case, we find, instead, "Freedom House exclusives. "
Before proceeding to details, we should take careful note of the background assumptions that guide this inquiry. As we noted, for Bra- estrup and Freedom House, the "allies" are the United States, the South Vietnamese client government, and the various South Korean, Thai, Australian, Chinese Nationalist, and other forces (largely merce- nary) mobilized by the United States. The "South Vietnamese" include our client government and the armed forces organized, supplied, trained, and directed by the United States, but exclude the indigenous NLF and its supporters, although the U. S. government never had the slightest doubt, and its specialists do not hesitate to concede, that the client regime had little support while its opponents in South Vietnam constituted so powerful a political force that any peaceful settlement was unthinkable. That the United States has a right to conduct military operations in South Vietnam to uproot the NLF and destroy the peas- ant society in which it was based, that its goals are democracy and self-determination, and that its forces "protect" and "bring security" to South Vietnamese peasants are principles taken for granted in the
Brliestrup-Freedom House version, where no patriotic assumption or cliche is ever challenged--or even noticed, so deeply rooted are these doctrines. Correspondingly, the fact that the media coverage surveyed is framed entirely within these patriotic premises passes unnoticed. The Freedom House inquiry cannot perceive fundamental bias favorable to the state because all ofthe premises ofstate doctrine are taken as given. There is "mindlessness" here, as Braestrup observes, although it is not quite what he perceives; rather, we find that Braestrup "mindlessly" adopts what we referred to in chapter 3 as a patriotic agenda, even more so than the media he condemns. And as we described in chapter I, the function of such "flak machines" as Freedom House is to ensure that the press stays within the bounds of this patriotic agenda,
The Tet offensive of January 1968 began on January 21 with a siege by North Vietnamese (NVA) regulars of a U. S. military base at Khe Sanh. near the 17th parallel. It was soon apparent that the purpose was to draw U. S. forces away from populated centers, and the siege suc- ceeded in this aim, as General Westmoreland rushed combat forces to the northern areas. On January 31, all major cities and thirty-six of forty-four provincial capitals, along with numerous other towns, came
THE INDOCHINA WAllS (I): VIETNAM 215
under simultaneous attack by southern NLF resistance forces ("Viet Cong"), along with some NVA elements. The effects are succinctly summarized by Wallace Thies in his scholarly study ofthe U. S. strategy of "coercing Hanoi":
" . although U. S. military commanders would later claim that the offensive had been anticipated and that the heavy casualties suf- fered by the attackers had resulted in a great victory for the Allies, the offensive was in fact a military setback for the American side. To meet the threat in the northern provinces and forestall a Dien Bien Phu-type defeat at Khe Sanh, half of all U. S. maneuver battalions in South Vietnam were deployed in I Corps (in the north]; the rest, along with the bulk of the combat-ready ARVN [GVN, Government of (South) Vietnam] units, were tied down defending the cities against the possibility of a second wave of attacks. As a result, the countryside went by default to the NLF, the pacification program was left in a shambles, and whatever losses the DRV / VC (North Vietnamese / Viet Cong] forces did suffer in the initial assaults were largely offset by the unimpeded recruiting that they conducted in the rural areas in the weeks that followed. 110
International Voluntary Services (IVS), which had a close familiarity with the situation in rural areas, withdrew most of its field workets in early 1968 because of "security conditions. " A volunteer reported in February: "The number of locations at which we can safely place a volunteer have significantly decreased in recent months"; another added that "we all knew that security in the countryside was getting worse and worse," contrary to the optimistic evaluations of the U. S. high command and Washington, which were relayed with little skepti- cism by the media in the pre-T et period. A South Vietnamese senator estimated that after Tet, the government controlled "only one third of the country," the remaining two-thirds being in the hands of the NLF, an estimate consistent with U. S. intelligence reports. I I I
The Tet offensive left Washington in a state of "troubled confusion and uncertainty," Undersecretary of the Air Force Townsend Hoopes observed, and "performed the curious service of fully revealing the doubters and dissenters to each other, in a lightning flash," within the Pentagon. While General Westmoreland persisted with the optimistic assessments that had been undermined by this dramatic demonstration that the NLF remained firmly rooted in the South despite the devastat- ing American attack on the rural society, the reaction in official Wash-
216 MAKUFACTURING CONSENT
ington circles was quite different. Summarizing the impact in Washing~ ton, George Herring observes that in private,
Johnson and his advisers were shocked by the suddenness and magnitude of the offensive . . . and intelligence estimates were much more pessimistic than Westmoreland. . . . An "air of gloom" hung over White House discussions, [General Maxwell] Taylor later observed, and [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] Gen- eral [Earle] Wheeler likened the mood to that following the first Battle of Bull Run. l12
General Wheeler reported that "to a large extent the VC now control
the countryside," the situation being particularly bad in the Mekong
Delta, and the Pentagon systems-analysis group concluded that "our
control of the countryside and the defense of the urban areas is now
essentially at pre-August 1965 levels," when the U. S. war was being lost,
according to General Westmoreland. A U. S. government military-his-
torical summary of the offensive in the Mekong Delta, completed in
April 1968, concluded that "The Tet offensive in IV Corps had a devastating effect on the Revolutionary Development [pacification] I Program. " As we shall see, these internal assessments are considerably
more "pessimistic" than those of the media that are denounced for the crime of excessive pessimism by Freedom House standards.
We might incidentally note that in IV Corps (including the Mekong
Delta), there were "no regular North Vietnam units" according to 1 Defense Secretary McNamara; the Freedom House study states that , "In the southernmost Delta, it was an ARVN-Vietcong [actually, U. S. -
Vietcong] guerrilla struggle," and more generally, Hanoi "had yet to
commit sizable (multi-division) forces in sustained, concerted attacks" , anywhere in South Vietnam (I, 24). 113 These assessments are what
motivated the mass-slaughter campaign carried out in the rural areas
of the delta and elsewhere in the post-Tet accelerated pacification
campaign, discussed earlier.
Even before the Tet offensive, Defense Secretary McNamara had privately concluded that military victory was an unreasonable objective and that the course of the war should be changed. Clark Clifford, who wa'3 brought in to replace him after Tet, had long '3hared such doubts, and they were reinforced by the evidence available to him and by the conclusions of the "Wise Men" whom Johnson called in to assess the situation. 114 Dean Acheson, who headed this group of longtime hawks drawn from business and political elites, agreed with Clifford's pessi- mism and "advised Johnson to scale down ground operations, reduce
J j
THE INDOCHINA WARS (I): VIETNAM 217
the bombing, and seek every means of terminating hostilities without abandoning South Vietnam. " The "Wise Men," "after full briefings from diplomatic and military officials, confirmed Acheson's findings . . . the consensus, as summed up by one of the participants) was that 'rhere are no military concJusjons in this war--or any military end in the future,' " so that "Johnson should therefore de-escalate the con- flict. "115
Notice that at this point some rather serious problems arise concern- ing the second component of the Freedom House thesis: that the mis- deeds of the media caused the public to oppose the war, undermining government resolve and leading to U. S. failure in its (by definition, benevolent) aims. To establish the "stab-in-the-back" component of the Freedom House thesis, it is necessary to show that public opinion was swayed toward opposition to the war by media coverage, and that the media and public opinion were a significant factor in the shift of government policy. Neither claim can be sustained.
With regard to the course of public opinion, the Freedom House study decisively refutes its own thesis. It includes a chapter on public opinion polls by Burns Roper, which demonstrates, as Braestrup con- cedes, that "there is no available evidence of a direct relationship between the dominant media themes in early 1968 and changes in American mass public opinion vis-a-vis the Vietnam war itself)" but rather a continuing "slow drift toward the dove side" after an initial wave of support for the president and "frustration and anger at the foe" during the T et offensive. A closer examination of their own data under- mines the Freedom House thesis even more thoroughly. The early response to the Tet offensive, during the period when media incompe- tence and unwarranted pessimism were allegedly at their height, was "an increase in the belligerency of the American public"; "the immedi- ate reaction of the U. S. public was to favor stiffened resistance [that is, U. S. resistance to an attack by South Vietnamese in South Vietnam] and intensified U. S. effort. " The major sentiment aroused was "Bomb the hell out of them. " In later February and March) when the media, in the Freedom House version, were beginning to "whisper" the true story of American victory) "there developed a decided negative reaction to the President's handling of the war and the war itself) and a distinct opposition to more aggressive U. S. military action. " In early February
1968, when the impact of the alleged media "distortions" and "pessi- mism" reached its peak, public opinion shifted toward the "hawks. " Public opinion returned to the pre-Tet figures by late February, when the media were allegedly correcting their earlier errors. By April, after the offensive had ended and the "errors" had been overcome (albeit in
zr8 MANUFACTURING CONSENT
a "whisper"), there was a sharp shift toward the "doves. " By April- May-June, measurements had returned to pre-Tet levels. "When looked at on this broader time scale, the T et offensive appears merely to have caused a minor ripple in a steadily changing attitude toward our involvement in the war," a shift toward the position of the doves after an initial shift toward the hawks during the period of media "pessi- mism. " Tet was just "one more incident" that "reminded the public that the war was not going well-that the confident predictions out of Washington had to be taken with a grain of salt-and that helped move public opinion in the antiwar direction in which it had been moving for nearly three years.