Quote Originally Posted by Pete View Post
What I hope to avoid are the days in '68-'73 when just about everything Military Assistance Command-Vietnam or DoD said was believed to have been false or misleading. We're the good guys and we should avoid saying or doing things that lead to the perception that we're not.
True and agree on both counts with the emphasis I added. There were untruths and there was dissembling but the truth was often ignored due to the beliefs...
One aspect of the Vietnam War that is not much commented upon is the extent to which the U.S. effort there received favorable coverage from the press prior to Tet in 1968...
That's a sweeping statement, too sweeping IMO. While it has some truth in it, there were pockets of unfavorable -- by design, I believe -- coverage from specific reporters and organizations.
most of the guys running the media then were World War II veterans who were trying to do their part for the country.
That part is correct; the problem was at lower levels, the reporters and their immediate superior editors far down the chain -- like most of their still ib college brethren, many of them were rather anti-military by inclination. I'll be the first to admit that inept PAO and Commander handling exacerbated that problem but those things did not cause it.
Whether right or wrong, Tet -- which was a defeat for the National Liberation Front and North Vietnamese Army -- was also a turning point in the U.S. perception of the war. Many editors and journalists felt they'd been too trusting of Westmoreland's and MACV's upbeat pronouncements. Afterwards MACV got no more free rides, in fact public opinion and press coverage went far, often unfairly, in the other direction.
True. The Big Story (LINK) by Peter Braestrup, a Purple Heart in Korea owning ex-Marine turned WaPo Bureau Chief in Saigon at the time of Tet puts a lot of myths to rest and shows how the Media folks deliberately twisted and buried things -- he also contended, accurately IMO, that for the first time, Tet caused a number of 'reporters' to actually be exposed to combat and it frightened and upset them...
In the here and now we don't need people on our own side undermining our credibility.
Probably not but people are venal and if it bleeds it leads...