Catering to the Silent Majority the My Lai Massacre As a Media Challenge
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The Legacy of American Photojournalism in Ken Burns's
Interfaces Image Texte Language 41 | 2019 Images / Memories The Legacy of American Photojournalism in Ken Burns’s Vietnam War Documentary Series Camille Rouquet Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/647 DOI: 10.4000/interfaces.647 ISSN: 2647-6754 Publisher: Université de Bourgogne, Université de Paris, College of the Holy Cross Printed version Date of publication: 21 June 2019 Number of pages: 65-83 ISSN: 1164-6225 Electronic reference Camille Rouquet, “The Legacy of American Photojournalism in Ken Burns’s Vietnam War Documentary Series”, Interfaces [Online], 41 | 2019, Online since 21 June 2019, connection on 07 January 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/647 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/interfaces.647 Les contenus de la revue Interfaces sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. THE LEGACY OF AMERICAN PHOTOJOURNALISM IN KEN BURNS’S VIETNAM WAR DOCUMENTARY SERIES Camille Rouquet LARCA/Paris Sciences et Lettres In his review of The Vietnam War, the 18-hour-long documentary series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick released in September 2017, New York Times television critic James Poniewozik wrote: “The Vietnam War” is not Mr. Burns’s most innovative film. Since the war was waged in the TV era, the filmmakers rely less exclusively on the trademark “Ken Burns effect” pans over still images. Since Vietnam was the “living-room war,” played out on the nightly news, this documentary doesn’t show us the fighting with new eyes, the way “The War” did with its unearthed archival World War II footage. -
Bearing Witness to the Inhuman at Mỹ Lai: Museum, Ritual, Pilgrimage
Vietnam: Memories and Meaning How to Cite: Tamashiro, Roy. 2018. Bearing Witness to the Inhuman at Mỹ Lai: Museum, Ritual, Pilgrimage. ASIANetwork Exchange, 25(1), pp. 60–79, DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/ane.267 Published: 31 May 2018 Peer Review: This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of ASIANetwork Exchange, which is a journal of the Open Library of Humanities. Copyright: © 2018 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Open Access: ASIANetwork Exchange is a peer-reviewed open access journal. Digital Preservation: The Open Library of Humanities and all its journals are digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS scholarly archive service. The Open Library of Humanities is an open access non-profit publisher of scholarly articles and monographs. Roy Tamashiro ‘Bearing Witness to the Inhuman at Mỹ Lai: Museum, Ritual, Pilgrimage’ (2018) 25(1), pp. 60–79 ASIANetwork Exchange, DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/ane.267 VIETNAM: MEMORIES AND MEANING Bearing Witness to the Inhuman at Mỹ Lai: Museum, Ritual, Pilgrimage Roy Tamashiro Webster University, US [email protected] This article explores how the Sơn Mỹ Memorial and Museum and its associated community activities and programs commemorate and memorialize the 1968 Mỹ Lai Massacre and its aftermath. The museum provides space for reflection and bearing witness to the profound suffering in the Massacre. -
Review by Jackson Lears of Seymour Hersh's 'Reporter: a Memoir'
Review by Jackson Lears of Seymour Hersh's 'Reporter: A Memoir' Review by Jackson Lears, published in London Review of Books, print issue of Sept 27, 2018. Reviewing: Reporter: A Memoir, by Seymour M. Hersh, published by Allen Lane (Penguin), June 2018, 355 pp, ISBN 978 0 241 35952 5 (Jackson Rears is Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University and is the editor and publisher of Raritan, a quarterly literary and political review. This book review is a subscriber- only article. To subscribe to Harper’s Magazine, click here (one year $46, two years $60, in U.S. or Canadian dollars.) The world needs Seymour Hersh. Without his indefatigable reporting, we would know even less than we do about the crimes committed by the US national security state over the last fifty years. While most of his peers in the press have been faithfully transcribing what are effectively official lies, Hersh has repeatedly challenged them, revealing scandalous government conduct that would otherwise have been kept secret: the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, the domestic surveillance programme run by the intelligence agencies in the 1960s and 1970s, the torturing of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. In each case what he discovered was an egregious instance of an ongoing wrong systemic to the US military and intelligence establishment: My Lai was merely the most horrific of the counterinsurgency operations that have characterised American wars ever since; the domestic surveillance that began in the 1960s was merely the prototype for the full-scale invasion of privacy that, as revealed by Edward Snowden, has since become standard government procedure; Abu Ghraib was merely the tip of the iceberg of ‘enhanced interrogation procedures’ still secretly in use in the endless war on terror. -
My Lai Massacre 1 My Lai Massacre
My Lai Massacre 1 My Lai Massacre Coordinates: 15°10′42″N 108°52′10″E [1] My Lai Massacre Thảm sát Mỹ Lai Location Son My village, Son Tinh District of South Vietnam Date March 16, 1968 Target My Lai 4 and My Khe 4 hamlets Attack type Massacre Deaths 347 according to the U.S Army (not including My Khe killings), others estimate more than 400 killed and injuries are unknown, Vietnamese government lists 504 killed in total from both My Lai and My Khe Perpetrators Task force from the United States Army Americal Division 2LT. William Calley (convicted and then released by President Nixon to serve house arrest for two years) The My Lai Massacre (Vietnamese: thảm sát Mỹ Lai [tʰɐ̃ːm ʂɐ̌ːt mǐˀ lɐːj], [mǐˀlɐːj] ( listen); /ˌmiːˈlaɪ/, /ˌmiːˈleɪ/, or /ˌmaɪˈlaɪ/)[2] was the Vietnam War mass murder of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968, by United States Army soldiers of "Charlie" Company of 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the Americal Division. Victims included women, men, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies were later found to be mutilated[3] and many women were allegedly raped prior to the killings.[] While 26 U.S. soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses for their actions at Mỹ Lai, only Second Lieutenant William Calley, a platoon leader in Charlie Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but only served three and a half years under house arrest. -
Unquiet American: Malcolm Browne in Saigon, 1961–65
THE UNQUIET AMERICAN: Malcolm Browne in Saigon, 1961–65 The Unquiet American: Malcolm Browne in Saigon, 1961–65, other invidious means to impede reporting he perceived Browne’s photograph of the self-immolation of Thich an exhibit drawn from The Associated Press Corporate as critical of his government. Meanwhile, the White House Quan Duc, taken on June 11, 1963, led President John F. From left: Archives, honors the courageous journalism of Malcolm and Pentagon provided little information to reporters and Kennedy to reappraise U.S. support of Diem. After Diem’s Malcolm Browne at work in New York as a chemist for the Foster D. Snell Browne (1931–2012) during the early years of the Vietnam pressured them for favorable coverage of both the political murder on Nov. 1, 1963, in a coup that most probably had Co. in 1953, before his induction into the military and subsequent career War. While Browne was reporting a war being run largely and military situations. the administration’s tacit approval, Browne provided an in journalism. covertly by the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon, unmatched account of Diem’s final hours that received PHOTO COURTESY LE LIEU BROWNE he was waging his own battles in another: the war against Browne arrived in Saigon on Nov. 7, 1961, joining Vietnamese tremendous play. For his breaking news stories and his Associated Press General Manager Wes Gallagher, left, walks with AP journalists. Meanwhile, he accompanied U.S. advisers colleague Ha Van Tran. The bureau soon acquired two astute analysis of a war in the making, Browne won the correspondent Malcolm Browne in Saigon upon Gallagher’s arrival, March 20, by helicopter into the countryside seeking the latest formidable additions, correspondent Peter Arnett and Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1964. -
Vietnam: Historians at War
Acad. Quest. (2008) 21:37–51 DOI 10.1007/s12129-008-9045-y ARTICLES Vietnam: Historians at War Mark Moyar Published online: 18 April 2008 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008 By the early 1990s, when I began studying the Vietnam War, the American public had largely lost interest in the history of that conflict. The Civil War and World War II were the wars that historians were advised to cover if they wanted to reach the public. Among government officials, military officers, and political scientists, Vietnam was considered irrelevant, because the United States would never get caught in protracted counterin- surgency warfare again. Iraq changed all that. Ever since the outbreak of insurgency in the former empire of Saddam Hussein, people of all persuasions have been mining the history of Vietnam for information that will support their preferred Iraq policies. Hundreds of thousands of American troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan have received more instruction on Vietnam than on any other historical subject. Although more than thirty years have passed since the end of the Vietnam War, historians today are as divided on what happened as the American people were during the war itself. During the 1960s and 1970s, huge numbers of antiwar Americans entered academia and the media, while few Vietnam veterans and other supporters of the war obtained jobs in those professions, in many cases because veteran status or pro-war sentiments were considered unacceptable. As a result, most academic and journalistic accounts of the war written during and shortly afterwards depicted Vietnam as a bad war that the United States should not have fought. -
Sexual Violence and the Us Military: the Melodramatic Mythos of War
SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND THE U.S. MILITARY: THE MELODRAMATIC MYTHOS OF WAR AND RHETORIC OF HEALING HEROISM Valerie N. Wieskamp Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University April 2015 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee _________________________ Chair: Robert Terrill, Ph.D. _________________________ Purnima Bose, Ph.D. _________________________ Robert Ivie, Ph.D. _________________________ Phaedra Pezzullo, Ph.D. April 1, 2014 ii © Copyright 2015 Valerie N. Wieskamp iii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the help of colleagues, friends, and family, a few of which deserve special recognition here. I am forever grateful to my dissertation advisor, Dr. Robert Terrill. His wisdom and advice on my research and writing throughout both this project and my tenure as a graduate student has greatly enhanced my academic career. I would also like to express my gratitude to my dissertation committee, Dr. Robert Ivie, Dr. Phaedra Pezzullo, Dr. Purnima Bose, and the late Dr. Alex Doty for the sage advice they shared throughout this project. I am indebted to my dissertation-writing group, Dr. Jennifer Heusel, Dr. Jaromir Stoll, Dave Lewis, and Maria Kennedy. The input and camaraderie I received from them while writing my dissertation bettered both the quality of my work and my enjoyment of the research process. I am also fortunate to have had the love and support of my parents, John and Debbie Wieskamp, as well as my sisters, Natalie and Ashley while completing my doctorate degree. -
MASARYK UNIVERSITY 20Th Century American
MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature 20th Century American Journalism as a Mirror of Society Bachelor Thesis Brno 2015 Thesis Supervisor: Author: Michael George, M.A. Romana Helešicová Affirmation: I hereby declare that I have worked on this thesis independently and that I have used only the sources listed in the Bibliography. I agree that the thesis will be deposited in the library of the Faculty of Education at Masaryk University in Brno and made available for academic purposes. March 30, 2015 …………………… Anotace Bakalářská práce se zabývá historií USA zprostředkovanou skrze tisk. Cílem práce je shrnout historii 20. století a vybrat zásadní okamžiky, které byly spojeny s žurnalistikou a zároveň měly dopad na širokou veřejnost. Nastíněna je také společenská atmosféra a situace na novinovém trhu, dále jsou v práci připomenuty významné osobnosti spojené se zmiňovanými událostmi. Na závěr je navrženo, jak lze získanými informacemi obohatit hodiny anglického jazyka na základní škole. Annotation This bachelor thesis is focused on a history of the USA mediated through the press. The goal of the thesis is to summarize the history of the 20th century and choose momentous events connected with the journalism which also had an impact on a general public. Furthermore, a social atmosphere and situation on a market are outlined and significant personalities related to mentioned events are reminded. In the end, there are examples how to enrich elementary schools‘ English lessons by using gained information. Klíčová slova historie USA, noviny, novináři, žurnalistika, 20. století, kultura, světové války Key words history of the USA, news, journalism, journalists, 20th century, culture, world wars Acknowledgements: I would like to thank my supervisor Michael George, M. -
Michael Kamber
Why Photography WHY PHOTOGRAPHY Michael Kamber I grew up in a time, in the 1960s and 70s, when photographs made a difference. My family got The Portland Press Herald every morning. There was always a black-and-white news image on the front page. This photo was a representation of an important event in the world from the previous day. Weekly news magazines, such as Time and Newsweek, were packed with photos too; I pored over them eagerly, occasionally cutting photos from their pages. They were my only links to far-off happenings in a distant world. The iconic photos of the civil rights movement in particular were burned into my consciousness. I studied the defiant marchers, snarling dogs, and pot-bellied Southern sheriffs with insouciant grins. Pictures from the Vietnam War changed my consciousness as well. We watched grainy clips on TV every evening. Yet it was the photos, rather than the news footage, that seared the deepest. I remember the photos and the photographers: Larry Burrow's color work from the field of battle, exhausted men and blood-stained ban- dages against the brown earth; Henri Huet, a French-Vietnamese As- sociated Press photographer, took pictures with the eye of a poet; the classic images that I would see again and again in my youth: Eddie Adams' Saigon execution photo; Nick Ut's picture of the napalmed girl running down Highway One. These photos were credited with 69 CREATIVE LIVES turning the American public against the war. These photos provided evidence of people's lives, their suffering, American foreign-policy failures; realities that needed to change. -
The My Lai Massacre: the Tragedy and Its Triumphs
The My Lai Massacre: the Tragedy and its Triumphs Rena Liu Senior Division Historical Paper Paper Length: 2,498 words Liu 1 As the Vietnam War raged in 1968, American soldiers killed 4071 Vietnamese civilians in the hamlet of My Lai. The atrocities committed were immediately covered up by the US military and not brought to light until 1969, when a freelance journalist exposed the massacre and its coverup. As the My Lai story developed through consequent court-martials and investigations, the massacre and its aftermath grew to become symbolic of American involvement in Vietnam2, revealing the brutal reality of the conflict and laying bare3 the corruption present in American institutions. Because of My Lai, public opinion shifted toward favoring withdrawal from Vietnam while the military was galvanized to reexamine itself and reform. Though the My Lai massacre eventually faded from the headlines, its legacy continues to affect its victims and shape America. In Vietnam, the scars of the war and its brutality remain, while in the US, American trust in its institutions has been irreversibly eroded. However, because of the action taken in the wake of tragedy, My Lai also has a legacy of triumph. My Lai demonstrated the critical function of journalism, directly influenced the US military’s present-day ethics, and served and continues to serve as a potent warning of the consequences of poorly waged war and institutional failure. Setting 1 Hersh, Seymour M. “Scene of the Crime” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/30/the-scene-of-the-crime. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019. 2 Levesque, Christopher J.”The Truth Behind My Lai”. -
War, Women, Vietnam: the Mobilization of Female Images, 1954-1978
War, Women, Vietnam: The Mobilization of Female Images, 1954-1978 Julie Annette Riggs Osborn A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee: William J. Rorabaugh, Chair Susan Glenn Christoph Giebel Program Authorized to Offer Degree: History ©Copyright 2013 Julie Annette Riggs Osborn University of Washington Abstract War, Women, Vietnam: The Mobilization of Female Images, 1954-1978 Julie Annette Riggs Osborn Chair of the Supervisory Committee: William J. Rorabaugh, History This dissertation proceeds with two profoundly interwoven goals in mind: mapping the experience of women in the Vietnam War and evaluating the ways that ideas about women and gender influenced the course of American involvement in Vietnam. I argue that between 1954 and 1978, ideas about women and femininity did crucial work in impelling, sustaining, and later restraining the American mission in Vietnam. This project evaluates literal images such as photographs, film and television footage as well as images evoked by texts in the form of news reports, magazine articles, and fiction, focusing specifically on images that reveal deeply gendered ways of seeing and representing the conflict for Americans. Some of the images I consider include a French nurse known as the Angel of Dien Bien Phu, refugees fleeing for southern Vietnam in 1954, the first lady of the Republic of Vietnam Madame Nhu, and female members of the National Liberation Front. Juxtaposing images of American women, I also focus on the figure of the housewife protesting American atrocities in Vietnam and the use of napalm, and images wrought by American women intellectuals that shifted focus away from the military and toward the larger social and psychological impact of the war. -
Found, Featured, Then Forgotten: U.S. Network TV News and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War © 2011 by Mark D
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 .....................................................................