Found, Featured, Then Forgotten: U.S. Network TV News and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War © 2011 by Mark D
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Found, Featured, then Forgotten Image created by Jack Miller. Courtesy of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Found, Featured, then Forgotten U.S. Network TV News and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War Mark D. Harmon Newfound Press THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE LIBRARIES, KNOXVILLE Found, Featured, then Forgotten: U.S. Network TV News and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War © 2011 by Mark D. Harmon Digital version at www.newfoundpress.utk.edu/pubs/harmon Newfound Press is a digital imprint of the University of Tennessee Libraries. Its publications are available for non-commercial and educational uses, such as research, teaching and private study. The author has licensed the work under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/. For all other uses, contact: Newfound Press University of Tennessee Libraries 1015 Volunteer Boulevard Knoxville, TN 37996-1000 www.newfoundpress.utk.edu ISBN-13: 978-0-9797292-8-7 ISBN-10: 0-9797292-8-9 Harmon, Mark D., (Mark Desmond), 1957- Found, featured, then forgotten : U.S. network tv news and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War / Mark D. Harmon. Knoxville, Tenn. : Newfound Press, University of Tennessee Libraries, c2011. 191 p. : digital, PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. [159]-191). 1. Vietnam Veterans Against the War—Press coverage—United States. 2. Vietnam War, 1961-1975—Protest movements—United States—Press coverage. 3. Television broadcasting of news—United States—History—20th century. I. Title. HE8700.76.V54 H37 2011 Book design by Jayne White Rogers Cover design by Meagan Louise Maxwell Contents Preface ...................................................................... vii Acknowledgments ......................................................... ix Introduction .................................................................. 1 1. A Powerful Medium Meets a Stereotype-Shattering Source ..... 5 2. The Past as Prologue: Antiwar Coverage Before the Vietnam Veterans Against the War .......................................29 3. Documenting the Coverage ...........................................43 4. No Winter Soldiers but a Spring of News Discovery .............57 5. Reconstructing the Last Patrol .......................................85 6. A Summer of (Largely Ignored) Discontent ........................93 7. Featured then Forgotten ............................................. 103 8. A Broader Meaning .................................................. 129 Appendix: Social Movement Theory as Applied to the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (Co-authored with Dr. Catherine Luther) ........................................................... 147 References ................................................................. 159 Preface Certainly I hope that Found, Featured, then Forgotten reaches and pleases some of the surviving antiwar veterans and newscasters of the era and that they find it a valuable addition to the historic record. I recognize that the book casually slides across the disciplines of journalism, broadcasting, political science, sociology, public opin- ion, and history, by necessity giving insufficient attention to the full breadth each area of study has to offer. Yet, I believe this book holds value in that it cuts across disciplines—and may even, by its telling story, have some popular appeal. This nerdy optimism, at its heart, is an act of faith in each reader. I believe a good story can survive academic silos, jargon, detours, and even preconceived notions. So, if you read this book casually or as an undergraduate or graduate supplemental assignment in history, media, political science, or sociology, please bear with the quirky mix. In the end, the antiwar veterans and those who covered them will tell us a lot about ourselves and our institutions, offering time- less lessons for those willing to listen and to reflect. Acknowledgments I am indebted to Linda Phillips and Marie Garrett of Newfound Press for their help in guiding this project and to Michelle Bran- nen for her technical assistance. Dr. Carol Tenopir, Professor of Information Sciences and Director of Research for the College of Communication and Information, University of Tennessee, offered specific suggestions that made this book better, as did reviewers Drs. Gregory Hooks and Donald Shaw. Jeff Machota of the VVAW National Office and Jenni Matz, Manager of Digital Projects for the Archive of American Television, were prompt, gracious, and helpful in securing multimedia resources. My wife, Becky, remains a source of inspiration and strength. I dedicate this work to her and to the brave people whose media encounters I have tried to chronicle, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. x Introduction Coming to terms with the Vietnam War hasn’t been easy for Ameri- cans, and in many ways we still haven’t come to terms with it. The aging warriors of that generation have been left to their own sense of what that history means and portends. For some people, nota- bly neoconservatives, the Vietnam War represents a lost cause and an untaken opportunity—a missed chance to spread democracy by warfare. To them, the lessons learned are strategic and tactical: muz- zle the news media, ignore dissent, and escalate as much as needed. The slowly growing levels of war since then (Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War) reestablish in their minds the notions of an undefeatable America, always in the right. This attitude played a large role in the folly that was and is the Iraq War. To liberals, progressives, and many moderates, the Vietnam War is a lesson in healthy distrust of official reasons. The war, sold as a crusade to halt the spread of global communism, actually had a strong overlay of nationalism and colonialism. It became more of a civil and guerilla war, with no front, little reliable local popula- tion, and frequent clashes between “lifer” officers and disgruntled draftees. Many soldiers saw no good purpose beyond surviving to go home—what the soldiers in the documentary World of Charlie Company called “back in the world.” A 1970 Herblock cartoon parodied well the circular logic of the war. It showed two U.S. soldiers sitting on a log in a jungle clearing. One is reading a newspaper that features Richard Nixon on the front IntROduCtiON page. He says to his buddy, “You see, the reason we’re in Indochina is to protect us boys in Indochina” (Block 1972). For many Americans, the war in Vietnam was best forgotten: put in the past as quickly as possible. Many veterans returned from the war unwilling to talk about their experiences, except among themselves. There was no celebration; there was little to celebrate. The civilian population seemed more than willing to join Vietnam veterans in this move-on-with-our-lives approach. Psychologist Dr. Robert Lifton called it a “psychologically illegitimate” war (MacPherson, 2001, 55). The popular mythology of Hollywood did little to reconcile the war in Vietnam with our national sense of self. Films that featured the war include the hyper-patriotic and simplistic The Green Berets with John Wayne, the gritty and troubling Platoon, the difficult and depressing Coming Home, the tragicomic Good Morning Vietnam, and the shocking and disturbing Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. They also include the historical revisionism of First Blood, the first of the Rambo movies, a muscular claim that valiant soldiers were not allowed to win in Vietnam and were sabotaged by their own country. One film, Born on the Fourth of July, highlights a key compo- nent for understanding those times: the great difficulty, shared by the general public and news organizations, in accepting the reality of substantial numbers of veterans returning to protest a war still in progress. Although these retrospective entertainment films are some- what instructive about our national cognitive dissonance about the Vietnam War, they pale in comparison to contemporaneous news coverage of the war and its protest movements. Found, Featured, then Forgotten examines that news coverage, focusing on how U.S. 2 INTRODUCTION television news organizations treated a very significant antiwar group, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). This book is not a history of the VVAW. Several authors have done a good job with that task. I recommend Richard Stacewicz’ Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Andrew E. Hunt’s The Turning, and Gerald Nicosia’s Home to War. Nor is this book a history of the Vietnam War. Among the many choices, I recommend beginning with Stanley Karnow’s Viet- nam. Finally, this book is not a history of U.S. broadcast news. Now the News, by Ed Bliss, serves as a good starting point for that. This book draws from these three histories to illuminate one specific and important U.S. broadcast news form: network televi- sion newscasts and their coverage of a very unusual and significant social movement, thousands of veterans returning to protest a war still in progress. Along the way, readers may discover certain points that validate or challenge social movement theory as well as assump- tions about mass media, the Vietnam War, veterans, and the antiwar movement. Chapter One introduces readers to the key players, antiwar vet- erans and network TV newscasters, and explores their interactions during the 1960s and 1970s. The chapter highlights the huge audi- ence and political significance of the U.S. network television news- casts of the era. It also explains