Journalistic Ethics in Vietnam War Reporting and Their Relationship to Trust

Home , David Halberstam, Malcolm Browne, Morley Safer, Neil Sheehan, Nick Ut, Peter Arnett

“Why We Write”: Journalistic Ethics in Vietnam War Reporting and Their Relationship to Trust

in the American Media and Government

By Bailey LeFever

Department of History

University of Florida

Thesis Adviser: Dr. Matt Jacobs

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Media Ethics and their Influence on Public Trust ...... 2

Chapter 1: Monks and Hysteria ...... 14

Chapter 2: Maybe the Best Weren’t the Brightest ...... 26

Chapter 3:1968 and Everything After ...... 32

Chapter 4: Conclusion: What type of reporting was most effective? ...... 38

Acknowledgements ...... 41

Bibliography ...... 42

Introduction

“And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march

into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about

1 sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.”

— Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

I didn’t grow up during the Vietnam War. I did, however, spend most nights at family dinner watching highlights from the Iraq War, craning my head to see around our marble lamp. So I see myself in Kevin Arnold from The Wonder Years watching the Christmas bombings from his living room. The fiery blasts of bombs on the Television screen, the booming dissenting opinion of my father, the confusion of school protests and what they meant for me. Though we grew up nearly 50 years apart, Kevin and I both represent the average American media consumers of today. But it was his war that influenced how my war was covered. It was the Vietnam War that shifted how journalists approach covering conflict. It was the Vietnam War that changed how much Americans trust the media.

The American coverage of the Vietnam War represents the largest discernable shift in recent history in the ever-changing relationship between the public and the media and the media and the government. The once friendly relationship between the media and the government became a vestige of what it once was; reporters covered the conflict honestly and pursued stories

1 O'Brien, Tim. 1990. The things they carried: a work of fiction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

3 that were more than shiny press releases given out by colonels. The war marked the first in

American history that was told honestly, and its transmission to the public arguably led to its demise.

Reporters like David Halberstam, Malcom Browne, Nick UT, Ted Koppel and Walter

Cronkite immortalized the Vietnam War in the same way that Christiane Amanpour and Katie

Couric covered the Iraq War in recent years. Cronkite’s “Evening News” was replaced with 60

Minutes in my world, and instead of the fireplace, we gathered around the flat screen. The reporting hasn’t changed. What changed was the public demand for this kind of biting, all- encompassing reporting. Americans today want to know the whole truth, for they now know the folly of trusting the government’s intentions blindly.

The press corps covered the misconduct of American soldiers, the horrors of the My Lai

Massacre and the fabrications presented by the U.S. government. The photos and stories broadcast around the world became a fixture at the dinner table of American families like Kevin

Arnold’s. Civil unrest ensued in mass protests across the country from college campuses in Ohio and Gainesville, Florida to Washington, D.C. Citizens and policymakers alike realized that the

United States’ effort in Vietnam might have been of nationalistic and selfish means, not for the

“spread of American ideals” or the protection of the South Vietnamese.

However, the government was still able to censor a good bit of coverage of the war, proving that the “guardians of the truth” role of the media had not completely evolved at that time. Some editors were sympathetic to various officials within the government or military and censored some of the most authentic storytelling out of Vietnam, namely coverage that showed the true brutality of American soldiers. Many of the accounts critical of the government were published overseas. One of which was Martha Gelhourn, whose revealing series on the

4 conditions of Vietnamese hospitals and orphanages was only completely published in Brittan as

2 no American paper would run the series

The cohort of reporters grew as the conflict passed on through the 1960s, which allowed for them to forcefully resist censorship by both governments. Malcom Browne, Neil Sheehan,

David Halberstam and others were added to the ranks and the dynamic began to change.

Reporters became less supportive of the war as the years passed. As the government led press

3 trips to the country to promote occupation, anti-war sentiment began to grow.

Some reporters, like Gelhourn, knew that the fate of “the luckless tribe” laid on their shoulders. There lies some honor in working for media outlets; in serving the community they love. There was no honor in working for a paper if they did not use their platform to spread the truth. Thus, the reporting became more revealing as the war went on and as journalists were exposed to the falsities perpetrated by the American government. Without ethical reporting, reporters sacrifice the honor that comes with journalism. These values are imparted on reporters not only by their respective employers, but by the collective. Journalists know that when one article is proved falsified, the entire news organization suffers. Ethics come into question in other ways as well. Writers must consider what context needs to be included in a story so as to properly inform the reader. Photographers must capture real moments, not allowing the subjects to pose or stage themselves. Anchors must triple check their copy for biases. Many Americans, albeit an aging demographic, still understand the mechanisms behind the newspapers they receive on their doorsteps each morning. A lot of this trust was built on the accurate portrayal of

2 Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty. London: Quartet Books, 1978, 427.

3 ibid

5 the Vietnam War. Americans began to learn of how the newsgathering process operated, and demanded more and more.

Ethical reporting practices influence trust, this is evident in the way Americans today disregard alt-weeklies that seldomly cite sources or stations that often misreport breaking news.

However, I wanted to see how reporting practices changed in Vietnam and if this ethics began to change. My research encompassed several key lines of questioning, namely: did media coverage change over the course of the war? Can the viewer see bias shift from pro-war to anti-war?

Which form of media coverage remained the most consistent throughout the war? Which reporters served as true public figures throughout the war? What specific pieces of their coverage had direct impact on public opinion? Which type of reporting actually provided an honest representation of the war? How was this piece received by the public? Are there key media episodes in the war where we can see public sentiment change? What distinguishes the reporting that emerged from the close group of reporters? Does this present new ethical dilemmas to consider?

Different mediums offer their own levels of realness. Traditional written pieces lend a more holistic picture of the scene, allowing the author to weave in multiple perspectives along with their own experience. Articles are also edited for accuracy and voice, letting the organization’s voice into the story. While broadcast news and photos are subject to editing of their own kind, it simply seen as easily as it is in print journalism. Sometimes words are not enough to bring the reader into the scene—cold facts and a narrative cannot replace a striking photograph or the cries of survivors.

Photos offer looks at quick moments, sometimes serving as the most striking storytelling devices. They are best presented in series that show the consumer a “zoom in, zoom out” look at the scene, rather than the most powerful shot. Scope helps give these moments more context.

This is how good photo stories are done well. However, some photos are best seen on their own for shock value. Ultimately what should be considered most by the photographer and editor is intent.

Broadcast coverage allows reporters to take the viewer into longer points of the story, but, means that the reporter cannot convey opinions and stories that do not lend themselves to quick sound bites or refuse to be shown onscreen. It also is far less edited than print typically is, allowing the reporting to feel a bit more authentic. Of course, this presents its own dilemma, as less editing can lead to misinformation spreading and a less informed public.

I was able to discern how ethical and authentic reporting influences the public’s relationship with the government by evaluating examples of broadcast, photo and written coverage from three different periods within the war, the beginning of the war, post-Christmas bombings and post-Tet, and polling from corresponding dates. My research will examine which type of reporting creates the most authentic portrayal of the situation. It is by this methodology that I hope to explore my topic. As the relationship between the media and government became more and more tenuous, public trust in the media increased and trust in the government declined.

There are, however, limits to what my methodology can accomplish. While there are well-documented cases of some reporting, not all reporters gave interviews about their experience in Vietnam, and I have no such means to verify that their words are true without interviews with reporters who have since passed. For that reason, I have examined some of the most prolific journalists from the era. There are many interviews available with each of these

7 journalists and many of them have even chronicled their reporting in books. Another benefit of selecting from the building blocks of the Vietnam canon is that most Americans probability laid eyes on these articles, photos or tuned into these broadcasts.

Ethical guidelines

The other major component of my thesis will delve into the ethics behind the reporting that occurred in Vietnam. This will be accomplished by using the actual stories behind the reporting, trying to glean if more authentic reporting led to more trust in the media. I have yet to find any theses or research that weave trust and reporting methods in Vietnam together in the same way or use even similar methodologies. However, The Uncensored War does provide a fair analysis of the media’s effect on the war, including some valuable public trust polling. It does not quite break it up in the way that I do, spending more time on broadcast’s effect on Americans and less on written coverage, but it confirms my suspicions that trust in the media strengthened during this period, while trust in the government waned. Many of the reporters involved in cataloging the war have left their stories immortalized in interviews, autobiographies and in direct correspondence. I have evaluated the reporting based on clear ethical guidelines specified by their respective news organizations and industry standards.

While ethical guidelines are much more detailed and updated more frequently (yearly) than they were at the time of the Vietnam War, ethical standards for good journalism tend to follow the same general themes provided by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) in

2014. “Members of SPJ believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough. An ethical journalist acts with integrity. The Society declares

8 these four principles as the foundation of ethical journalism and encourages their use in its practice by all people in all media: seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently and to be accountable and transparent.4 SPJ has dictated form for journalism since its first code was enacted in 1926, so these were the same standards that guided journalists and their editors in

Vietnam. I do admit that it is rather challenging for any sort of punishment to be laid upon news organizations for veering from these standards.5 However, news organizations lose credibility and oftentimes their following if they promulgate false claims. Therefore, we can place a fair amount of trust in a few key media organizations and consider the majority of their work to be its own sort of canon on Vietnam..

I have made my main selections for review from the most respected outlets and based on their circulation. The New York Times was a natural fit as it is well-known for having one of the most detailed sets of ethics in print journalism and it was widely read by the American people at the time of Vietnam, thus it is a suitable barometer of public opinion. The preamble to its code reads: “The Times treats its readers as fairly and openly as possible. In print and online, we tell our readers the complete unvarnished truth as best we can learn it. It is our policy to correct our errors, large and small, as soon as we become aware of them. We treat our readers no less fairly in private than in public…The Times gathers information for the benefit of its readers…Staff members who plagiarize or who knowingly or recklessly provide false information for

6 publication betray our fundamental pact with our readers. We will not tolerate such behavior.”

4 "SPJ Code of Ethics - Society of Professional Journalists." Society of Professional Journalists - Improving and Protecting Journalism since 1909. Accessed December 13, 2018. https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp. 5 "SPJ Code of Ethics - Society of Professional Journalists." Society of Professional Journalists 6 "Ethical Journalism." The New York Times. January 05, 2018. Accessed December 10, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/ethical-journalism.html#ourDutyToOurReaders.

I would argue that between a fair amount of editing and these ethical guidelines, print journalism provides a less authentic picture of the Vietnam War at any particular moment.

The code of ethics for photojournalists is quite similar to that of print journalism, but registers the main ethical dilemma presented by photo journalism: how much of the situation is shown.

So, I draw from the main source I am using for Vietnam War photographs: The Associated Press.

AP pictures must always tell the truth. We do not alter or digitally manipulate the content of a photograph in any way. The content of a photograph must not be altered in Photoshop or by any other means. On those occasions when we transmit images that have been provided and altered by a source — the faces obscured, for example — the caption must clearly explain it. Transmitting such images must be approved by a senior photo editor. Except as described herein, we do not stage, pose or re-enact events. When we shoot video, environmental portraits, or photograph subjects in a studio care should be taken to avoid misleading viewers to believe that the moment was spontaneously

7 captured in the course of gathering the news.

Thus, if these ethical guidelines are followed, photos tend to offer more honest looks at reality and might have more weight historically.

Finally, we look at broadcast ethics to determine the legitimacy of newscasts like

Cronkite, Felton and colleagues. The CBS code of ethics dictates that “The CBS Corporation

Business Conduct Statement affirms our commitment to the highest standards of appropriate and ethical business behavior. Of course, this Statement cannot anticipate every business situation and that is why we ultimately rely on your good judgment, your ability to determine what is right and appropriate and your ability to reach out and seek help when necessary in ensuring that our daily business practices reflect the principles laid out in this Statement.”

The guidebook offers tips on relationships between reporters and their subjects, accepting gifts and the like, but is not nearly as detailed as that of the NYT or the Associated Press. This

7 "Associated Press Code of Ethics for Photojournalists." Accessed December 10, 2018. https://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/goffs/135 photojournalism/Associated Press ethics code.pdf.

10 offers its own challenge in analysis. All of these guidelines share a focus on capturing the truth and on clear communication of what that truth is. These codes are something news organizations can point to when challenged, but even more so, help guide reporters in their reporting.

Public Opinion Polling

My research into public opinion polling via the Pew Research Center shows trust in the government waning throughout the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. 8It would be foolish to blindly assume that the decline in public trust was caused solely by each presidency’s handling of the Vietnam War, but this most assuredly should be taken into account. 9 Violent protests erupted during the period, the Civil Rights Movement hit its peak and Nixon was exposed for an excessive amount of wiretapping at the Democratic National Convention. The public opinion polling graph below clearly indicates that trust in the government began to drop significantly in the 1970s. This drop directly aligns with growing dissent for the Vietnam War.

8 Bell, Peter. "Public Trust in Government: 1958-2017." Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. April 25, 2018. Accessed December 10, 2018. http://www.people-press.org/2017/12/14/public-trust-in-government-1958- 2017/. 9 Bell, Peter. "Public Trust in Government: 1958-2017." Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

I also consulted Gallup polling carried out in the past century, specifically, “Long-Term

Gallup Poll Trends: A Portrait of American Opinion Through the Century.” Gallup polling is well-respected and carried out by an institution that makes no gains from the results of these tests. Also, by selecting this corporation’s polling, one can infer that the level of bias is most surely lower than if a news organization had carried out the surveys. The sample covers adults able to be reached by telephone from 1945-1996 and sum nearly 1,000 responses in total. Both

Pew and Gallup’s data proves that the presidents had lost their seeming omniscient power; they could make mistakes like any one of the men they sent off to war.

The rhetoric set into place with Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Why we are in Vietnam” address at Johns Hopkins in 1965 “We fight because we must fight” and “We must deal with the world as it is, if it is ever to be as we wish.11” was directly contradicted by the honest and holistic

10“Public Trust in Government: 1958-2019.” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 11 "Lyndon B. Johnson: Address at Johns Hopkins University." The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26877.

12 coverage of the war by the press corps, thereby degrading citizens trust in their fearless leaders.

It is unsurprising that these firm words were upturned by years of relentless reporting and the first televised accounts of fighting. Words start to lose their sting when soldiers stop returning home and war drags on.

However, 1963 Gallup polling shows that just half of Americans knew what was going on in Vietnam.12This remains consistent with civilian engagement with the Iraq War, among those who do read and watch the news, trust has grown. Trust had shifted from the government to the “gatekeepers”.

Relationships between reporters and the public

The advent of television allowed reporters to cover the misconduct of the American government day in and day out, and this constant honest coverage led to strong relationship between the viewers and the broadcasters. News was becoming more and more important to the

American people with an increased dependence on T.V. by the end of the war.13The 30-minute broadcast and trust in newscasters made the journalistic landscape more inviting, though a completely different world than print. War was shown in sound and color in one’s own home, instead of cartoons or “The Ed Sullivan Show”, Americans were brought into the thicket of

Saigon. Public opinion could be swayed by a nightly newscast. The magnitude of the relationships can be described by the words of Lyndon B. Johnson when he said,” If we’ve lost

14 Cronkite, then we’ve lost the War.

12 Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty. 13 Hallin, Daniel C. 1986. The "uncensored war": the media and Vietnam. 14 Pach, Chester. "The Way It Wasn't: Cronkite and Vietnam." History News Network. Accessed December 10, 2018. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/104635.

Thus, the switch to a relationship-based trust in the media helped correspondents to develop autonomy. Public demand instilled journalists with more power than ever before to report on the brutality of war. Without public protests and outcry, outlets like CBS and NBC,

The Washington Post and The New York Times would not have the financial backing to publish controversial stories.

Monks and hysteria

In June, Browne’s photo of the self-immolation of Buddhist monk in Saigon sparked outrage around the world and brought attention to the developing conflict. In November the

United States assisted the South Vietnamese army in assassinating President Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. And finally, on November 22, 1963 President Kennedy was assassinated on a visit to Texas and Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president of the United States.

At the beginning of the conflict, there were few reporters covering the war. A few reporters dominated the Saigon news bureau. Of these, most were British. Only one American daily, The New York Times, sent a correspondent. 15 The reporters were not against the U.S. presence in Vietnam itself, at least in the beginning. They wrote with indifference, erring more on the side of support than criticism. There was no reason not to believe in Uncle Sam and his

16 good promises.

David Halberstam was the first American correspondent assigned to the Saigon bureau.

He penned for the New York Times. At first, his reporting made no attempt at testing the government. This is evidenced in his early articles. In an article entitled: Reds Infiltrate U.S.

Unit, Spread Propaganda, published on February 5, 1963 in the New York Times, Halberstam writes that a Communist unit distributed anti-American propaganda to an aviation unit. He goes on to liken the sequence of events to how the Vietcong spread propaganda to Americans near the

17 Camu airstrip.

Their early reporting is mirrored by the rhetoric of the government at the time, which focused on the defeat of communism, the country striving to spread free ideals and American

15 Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty. London: Quartet Books, 141. 16 Hallin, Daniel C. 1986. The "Uncensored war": the media and Vietnam, 412. 17 Halberstam, New York Times, 1963.

15 exceptionalism post WWII. That same message was disseminated by the American government decades into the future and is even relayed in LBJ’s “Why We Fight” address at Johns Hopkins years later.18 “Because we must fight if we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny. And only in such a world will our own freedom be finally secure.” I would argue that the government’s approval rating had not yet been affected by the war. Gallup polls from

1963 indicate that Kennedy’s job approval was at in the low 60th percentile.19 This was a significant drop-off from polling done in 1961 that held his popularity closer to 80% of the population. However, I would argue that the drop in support was more in regard to his mishandling of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the effort in Vietnam was not yet viewed in a negative light by most of the population.

The reporters became a close-knit group, relying on each other for support in a country often hostile toward the media. It is in this way that they subverted pressure from the government and banded together to circumvent censorship by the government and the media. In some cases, pushing stories through editors sympathetic to the American government’s wishes.

As news organizations became more autonomous, the reporters were able to circumvent governmental censorship. The myth that the reporters could not cover the War well, is the work of the American government’s rhetoric. General William Westmoreland, commander of the US forces in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, would complain that is “Fifty-one percent were under 29 and, for the most part, they had little or no experience as war correspondents.”20 While a large subset of reporters covering the Vietnam War were young and at the beginning of their careers, I

18 Gallup, “Long-term Gallup Poll Trends: A Portrait of American Public Opinion Through the Century”, 1945-1998, in title of collection italicized, Frank Newport, David W. Moore, editor of collection if available (place of publication, publisher, date),21. 19 Gallup, “Long-term Gallup Poll Trends: A Portrait of American Public Opinion Through the Century”. 20 Hammond, William M. "The Press in Vietnam as Agent of Defeat: A Critical Examination." Reviews in American History 17, no. 2 (1989): 312-23. doi:10.2307/2702936.

16 would argue that as they spent the majority of their early years in Vietnam and worked closely with colleagues to cover the conflict they became the true experts on the subject. Halberstam later reminisced:

“Remember, we were very young. A small handful. None of us had big reputations. I mean, you talk about Neil Sheehan now, and he's a distinguished reporter. Peter Arnett, he's a distinguished reporter. Malcolm Browne, I mean they all won Pulitzer prizes, they're all famous. It's a legendary group. Then, we were young. Our average age was twenty-six, twenty-seven. Nobody had ever heard of us. So, the idea was, you know, who are these young men. We can crunch them. They're not famous. They sit around the Caravelle bar all day drinking and

21 reinforcing their own doubts.” In this way, the reporters were able to form a close brotherhood and insight on stories and the course of the war.

Also, to be able to report for an organization like The New York Times or the Associated

Press requires a certain amount of skill and credibility rarely found at a young age. Reporters don’t jump from college to working at The New York Times. That is not the case today and it was not the case in the 1960s. These reporters would not have been selected had they not been talented. Their credibility was further solidified when they were imbedded into units, where they built close relationships with military officials and locals. 22Reporters were accredited to company units and largely uncensored when edited like those of Wes Gallagher. 23Gallagher, of the

Associated Press, noted that “government officials frequently cited what they called ''the national interest'' in trying to discourage the reporting of unpleasant news from Vietnam and other troubled areas”24. He aimed to change the general practice and proclaimed: ''We are not a vehicle

21 "WGBH Openvault," Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with David Halberstam. 22 “The Uncensored War,” 10. 23 Hallin, Daniel C. 1986. The "uncensored war": the media and Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press. 24 Pace, Eric. "Wes Gallagher, 86, President And General Manager of A.P." The New York Times. October 13, 1997. Accessed December 3, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/13/us/wes-gallagher-86-president-and-general- manager-of-ap.html.

17 to serve the 'national interest' as defined by politicians,'' he said, ''but to publish the truth as we

25 see it.''

The group of reporters became an elite entity the American people relied on, and to a certain extent, so did the soldiers. The reporters were able to paint their victories and struggles in heroic light. 26 The New York Times reporters took interviews primarily from field level officers, who were more open to emotion and honesty.27 The soldiers were able to be more upbeat or dejected, and this lent a genuine touch to the reporting. This is referenced by David Halberstam in an interview with WGBH:

“I mean if I went down and tried to interview some battalion advisor in My Tho, the seventh division area, they wouldn't tell me anything the first time. But if I go out in the field with them and we spend overnight and the ARVN, the Vietnamese army does not fight very bravely, in fact it cuts and runs or avoids a battle as it was wont to do, I mean, he's not going to come back and bullshit me. I mean, he's going to tell me straight.

28 So we had terrific sources. We had a great little intelligence network of our own.”

Connections like these allowed reporters like Halberstam, Browne and others to find out what was truly going on in the country.

As the war progressed, Halberstam’s reporting became more adversary and President

Kennedy requested to the New York Times that Halberstam be moved to another bureau. This is a clear representation of the media landscape of the past, one where the government could directly interfere with the type of coverage the war was receiving. Halberstam referenced the challenges of the tenuous relationship years later in an interview with WGBH: “I mean it was at

25 Pace, Eric. "Wes Gallagher, 86, President And General Manager of A.P." 26 Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty. 27 Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty. 28 http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_A0BD959F4CB841FB9145B55A5EBBF257

18 once romantic and unreal and very tough. I mean it was a very hard-edged assignment. And we

29 were the enemy of the people. Enemy of the government. American and Saigon.”

The relationship between the media cohort and the government was consistently adversarial, Halberstam remembers. “Well, because I think the Kennedy Administration and later the Johnson Administration, and the Diem government had everyone else lined up. I mean the

Diem government was a kind of clumsy, authoritarian or totalitarian state where nobody really

30 spoke in opposition to the government. Diem was always being reelected by 99 percent.”

The American government spread propaganda from the beginning of the war onward, hoping to quell any deniers with the same reasurement that had always worked in wartime.

Halberstam echoes this in the same interview with WGBH, “Everybody in the American

Embassy was...I mean the American government in Washington was, had an essential policy of public relations. If you could not win the war on the ground, you could at least win it in public relations and make it look like it was going well. So there was a very calculated and orchestrated

31 policy of people saying how well the war was going.”

“It was like this from the official start of the War on,” Halberstam explained.32 His memory is mirrored by a meeting of Johnson’s cabinet on June 10, 1964 in which Assistant

Secretary of State for Public Affairs Manning was asked to “draft guidance for the use of everyone to include statements to the press…..statements to Congressmen, and statements to foreign nations. It was agreed that we would continue to stand on “no comment” to the press but

29 "WGBH Openvault." Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with David Halberstam. 30 WGBH Openvault." Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with David Halberstam. 31 WGBH Openvault." Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with David Halberstam. 32 WGBH Openvault." Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with David Halberstam.

19 that Congressmen and foreign government officials would be told that our planes had been fired

33 on and that they had fired back.”

Halberstam also references how at the beginning of the War, the government utilized the media to spread its own propaganda, in the way it always had done. “You know, someone would arrive with the airport, they'd fly in a general. They didn't fly the general in to learn what was going on. They'd fly him in so he could come down the steps of Tan Son Nhut Airport and say

"I'm glad to be here in Saigon where there is a great movement toward victory...President Diem has all his people behind me...inevitable victory...light at the end of the tunnel..." that kind of stuff. My friend Neil Sheehan who was only about twenty-five years old at the time would nudge me and say, "ah, another foolish Westerner come to lose his reputation to Ho Chi Minh."

The reporters believed this early on, only catching on to the government’s carefully orchestrated actions as the war progressed. Halberstam remembered, “Anyway, it was an orchestrated public relations account in which it was the lying machine. Washington would tell

Saigon what it wanted to hear. And sure enough Saigon would very quickly tell Washington what it wanted to hear and Washington would say isn't it marvelous it's all going as well out

34 there as we thought.”

And then the one sour note. The one thing that was not being controlled was this small handful of American reporters. And, you know, they would always say...McNamara would say, "my only problem out there is the American press." And the American ambassador once told me, "Mr. Halberstam, you're always looking for the hole in the doughnut." Of course, there was no doughnut, there was only this hole. I mean, would that there were a doughnut there. We were the enemy.

And it was a constant pressure trying to find our sources, trying to stick it to us. And it gradually became very personal, they would try and find our sources, they

33 Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam Papers 34 WGBH Openvault." Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with David Halberstam, 1979.

began to try and destroy our credibility politically, they...it got...our reputations, indeed our manhood, I mean, the stereotype of us. We had terrific sources. We had all the people in the American Embassy that the American Embassy should have been listening to. I mean we had a thousand and one Deep Throats. I mean the phrase Deep Throat was not yet current, but I mean, you had two levels in Saigon. You had policy which Saigon was reflecting back to Washington. Therefore you'd go and see the American ambassador, you didn't get reality, you got policy. You went to see General Harkins and you got a terrific four star and you got policy.

And then you went out in to the field and there you get, moving up what really was happening. I mean a captain goes out and risks his life for the Vietnamese battalion and he's not going to come back and con you. And suddenly you're a colonel advising a division...American colonel advising a division and he's got young captains going out and risking their lives and he's not going to lie to you.

So the moment you gain their respect that you will be straight and won't ruin their careers and you'll protect their names, I mean, every passionate officer in Vietnam was our source. Everybody who cared. Those who cared more about reality and what was happening and the young men under their command than they did about their own careers, those were our sources and we had them everywhere and they came to trust us. They would try and go through the channels and then they would find that Saigon did not want to hear their reporting. They would push it down. And then rather reluctantly they would begin to talk to us. And you would have a scenario almost. Somebody would come in the country and you'd go down and see him and he's, "I've heard about you reporters...I don't want any part of you guys and you're against the team. We're on the team." You'd go and see him two or three months later and he'd be a little disillusioned and he'd say, "well, you know it really isn't working so well." By the fourth or fifth month and particularly if you kept going back and you went out in the field and shared the danger, and shared the hardship, and took those risks, they'd tell you the truth.

The continued relationships helped writers and photographers to find sources even after the government attempted to intimidate them. He later became the Saigon bureau chief, after a career working beats in Cuba and Moscow. Including that of Malcom Browne, an Associated

Press photographer was a former chemist seeking a change of pace. The photographer was alerted to the potential self-immolation of Buddhist monks in advance and was able to capture

21 the moment for the world. The 1963 photograph remains one of the most iconic images from the

Vietnam War.

Browne was alerted by that there would be something special happening that day, but only he and Halberstam decided to cover the event. The “special event” turned out to be the self- immolation of a Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc. Duc’s immolation was an effort to protest the treatment of the Buddhists by President Diem. Halberstam and Browne were beat up, but they knew the most important thing was to get the film back home and show the public what had happened.36 The pair won a Pulitzer for their reporting in 1964.

Halberstam’s account of what happened that day is harrowing, but gives greater context to the moment:

35 "The Burning Monk | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time," Time , accessed January 10, 2019, http://100photos.time.com/photos/malcolm-browne-burning-monk. 36 PBS, accessed April 10, 2019, https://www.pbs.org/weta/reportingamericaatwar/reporters/browne/protests.html.

“Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering

and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of

burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could

hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked

to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think . .

As he burned, he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward

37 composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.”

Browne and Halberstam watched the monks douse the man with gasoline. Browne acted swiftly on his feet and captured one of the most silently powerful moments in history, “I realized at that moment exactly what was happening, and began to take pictures a few seconds apart,” he wrote soon after.38 The photo showed the true sentiment in Vietnam, it was hard for the government to argue with such a powerful photo. President Kennedy remarked, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one”. Afterward,

Americans questioned the war in greater depth and anti-war sentiment began to rise, arguably leading to U.S. support of a coup against the South Vietnamese leader (Diem).

He was eventually expelled from Vietnam, from where he went on to work for ABC

T.V.as a broadcaster. His explanation of why he quit a year later is quite telling: “I guess I became a little bit disenchanted. It seemed to me that there were a lot of things I wanted to say about the Vietnam War and it was very difficult to say them when I was doing a stand-up or against the backdrop of firing or some other distraction that didn’t really bear direction on what I

37 "The Burning Monk | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time.” 38 "The Burning Monk | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time.”

23 wanted to say.”39 He felt that photography was the best way he could tell of the horrors he had seen. The viewer sometimes feels detached when “given the facts” by a reporter in a suit that isn’t out in the action. Perhaps television bites are not always the best way to tell a story, especially when images can be so striking. Browne knew of the power of images; he’d won a

Pulitzer for shocking the world. Browne knew of the power of images; he’d won a Pulitzer for shocking the world with “Napalm Girl.” Thus, Browne went back to print, this time to The New

York Times, and also published a memoir entitled “Muddy Boots and Red Socks” that was edited by those who also spent significant time in Vietnam. In these outlets, he could comment on his own opinion of the war and appeal to a more traditional audience

Though Browne had strong relationships with other reporters in the Saigon bureau, they still took care to report independently. This ensures that reporters are seeking out different narratives, providing broader context for conflict and that the reported incident is not isolated. In an interview with C-SPAN In 1993, Browne remembers being good friends with Neil Sheehan and Halberstam.40 While the three were in competition with one another, “the interesting aspect of our work at the time is that despite the fact that we weren’t really cooperating with each other, because we were going out and doing our own thing. We came to very much some of the same conclusions about the way the war was going, the unlikelihood that America would be able to prevail there and the undesirability of continuing American presence there.” He argued that the trio “viewed the Vietnam War more or less on the same terms.”

39 Honest Reporting Is the Last Thing Most People Want: War, Overpopulation, the Future, CSPAN, (1993) 40 Honest Reporting Is the Last Thing Most People Want: War, Overpopulation, the Future, CSPAN, (1993)

Pictured above: Halberstam, Browne and Sheehan converse while covering the Vietnam War.

Pro-government sentiment is also seen in broadcast coverage at the beginning of the War.

By November of 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald. Cronkite comes onscreen to inform the viewers, somber and visibly shaken.

The newscaster informed the public, "From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official,

President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2 o'clock Eastern Standard Time, some

38 minutes ago. Vice President Lyndon Johnson has left the hospital in Dallas, but we do not know to where he has proceeded. Presumably, he will be taking the oath of office shortly and

42 become the 36th president of the United States.''

Cronkite's closing remarks on Nov. 25, 1963, after Kennedy's funeral show public love and support for the Kennedy administration. More importantly, his words speak empathically of

Kennedy. The newscaster was not yet disillusioned by the American government. He was still

41 "Crisis in Burma," IWR, September 30, 2017, , accessed April 24, 2019, https://iwr.news/crisis-in-burma/. 42 Ap, "Highlights of Some Cronkite Broadcasts," CBS News, July 17, 2009, , accessed April 10, 2019, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/highlights-of-some-cronkite-broadcasts/.

25 residing in Camelot. His broadcast also reveals his close relationship with the public; speaking to them in an authoritarian, fatherly manner:

"It is said that the human mind has a greater capacity for remembering the pleasant than the unpleasant. But today was a day that will live in memory and in grief. Only history can write the importance of this day: Were these dark days the harbingers of even blacker ones to come, or like the black before the dawn shall they lead to some still as yet indiscernible sunrise of understanding among men, that violent words, no matter what their origin or motivation, can lead only to violent deeds? This is the larger question that will be answered, in part, in the manner that a shaken civilization seeks the answers to the immediate question: Who, and most importantly what, was Lee Harvey Oswald? The world's doubts must be put to rest. Tonight, there will be few Americans who will go to bed without carrying with them the sense that somehow they have failed. If in the search of our conscience we find a new dedication to the American concepts that brook no political, sectional, religious or racial divisions, then maybe it may yet be possible to say that John Fitzgerald Kennedy did not die in vain. That's the way

43 it is, Monday Nov. 25, 1963. This is Walter Cronkite, good night.

The opening credits to “Evening News Hour” are much like a T.V. show. The segment opens with Cronkite seated at the desk, the clear focal point of the shot. In the first few moments, the presenters’ names roll across the screen. It feels intimate, as though you are chatting with a close friend about the state of the union. As television became more and more important in the everyday lives of Americans, broadcasters became their own sort friends.

43 Ap, "Highlights of Some Cronkite Broadcasts," CBS News.

1968 and everything after

A clipping found in the Michael Gannon papers44 from the Independent Florida Alligator article from 1968 bears a headline reading: “1968: The Year Everything Changed.” Namely because of the Tet Offensive, an attack made by the North Vietnamese across South Vietnam on the Asian lunar New Year holiday, known as “Tet”. The attack was unexpected by the South

Vietnamese and the casualties numbered in thousands.45 Back at home, Americans realized the war was far from over.

Father Michael Gannon wasn’t a soldier, an officer or a governmental official. He was a historian and a Catholic priest from Gainesville, Florida who traveled to Vietnam in the summer of 1986 to work on a book about the War. His personal diary entries offer an intimate look at the

War from the perspective of a concerned, somewhat everyday citizen.46 He writes in his personal notes, “It seemed to me that there was in fact something very important for the American people to know. And so, I set out to find what made it a fact.” But, to my embarrassment, I discovered it

47 was not the fact I thought it was.”

While compiling research and interviews for his book, he churned out articles for the

“Florida Catholic” on topics varying from Vietnamese orphanages to funerals for the Charlie

Company. Gannon realized from his thousands of conversations with soldiers that “the majority of our young soldiers and marines, had no great enthusiasm for the war…Furthermore, I found

45 Michael D. Mosettig, "The Campaign That Changed How Americans Saw the Vietnam War," PBS, January 31, 2018, , accessed April 10, 2019, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/the-campaign-that-changed-how- americans-saw-the-vietnam-war. 46 Michael V. Gannon Papers. Special Collections. George A. Smathers Library. University of Florida. 47 Michael V. Gannon Papers.

27 among them no widespread recognition of the “plight” of the Vietnamese people, for the reason that few of them had any meaningful personal contact with civilians who were not known or

48 suspected VC or NVA.”

Gannon is pictured above on the far right.

In an interview with a University of Florida historian, Gannon gives background on how

his experience reporting during the war influenced the rest of his career: “I went to

Vietnam in 1968 as a war correspondent, and on my return I became involved in the anti-

war movement on the basis on what I saw and experienced.”

Gannon’s experience in Vietnam influenced his lifetime effort against violence.

The bulk of his career was spent as the director of the Catholic Student Center in Gainesville,

Florida and as a history professor at the University of Florida. In an interview with a University

48 Michael V. Gannon Papers. 49 "A Man for All Seasons." News. Accessed April 01, 2019. https://news.ufl.edu/articles/2017/04/a-man-for-all- seasons.html.

28 of Florida historian, Gannon explained his role in the college community, “I counseled students the best I could, and I stood by them. Though I did not encourage them in any way, I stood by them when they themselves of their own volition opposed the war in various forms: vigils, speeches, assemblies, marches, demonstrations, and so forth.” He writes in greater detail on the social unrest caused by the War, by the violent images that reverberated on their Television screens.

“While there were many such minor examples of student opposition to the war, the two principal instances in which student opposition became highly visible and, indeed, highly dangerous, was in the spring of 1970, following the Kent State murders and the invasion of Cambodia, and the spring of 1972, following [President] Richard Nixon's mining of Haiphong Harbor. Those two are very complicated events, and I did play a role in both of them by way of doing my best to prevent violence, casualties and

50 property damage.”

Thus, by 1968, presidential job approval dropped down to 42%, a sharp decline in the support held for the office in the early 60s.51 Photography continued to play an important role in shifting

American sentiment as the war progressed. Following Malcom Browne’s burning monk photo in the canon of important Vietnam War photograph’s is Edie Adams Saigon execution photo from

1968. The photo’s moniker became the “shot heard round the world.” Adams was a photographer working with the Associated Press in the Saigon bureau. Adams took the photo two days after the Tet offensive, unknowing when he took the photo that the South Vietnam national police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan would execute the Viet Cong member.52 The photo is horrifying; it shows man killing man. However, it represents ethical reporting practices at their best and became help usher in a turning point of sentiment in the war.

50 Michael V. Gannon Papers. 51 Gallup, “Long-term Gallup Poll Trends: A Portrait of American Public Opinion Through the Century”. 52 "Saigon Execution | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time." Time. Accessed April 24, 2019. http://100photos.time.com/photos/eddie-adams-saigon-execution.

Adams captured the entire sequence of events, shown below, but the photo was published on its own. The casualness of the shot is striking, and I agree that it was most powerful presented on its own.

Three years before his death, Adams wrote:

53 "Saigon Execution | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time."

“I won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for a photograph of one man shooting another. Two people died in that photograph: the recipient of the bullet and GENERAL NGUYEN NGOC LOAN. The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn't say was, "What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?" General Loan was what you would call a real warrior, admired by his troops. I'm not saying what he did was right, but you have to put yourself in his position. The photograph also doesn't say that the general devoted much of his time trying to get hospitals built in Vietnam for war casualties. This picture really messed up his life. He never blamed me. He told me if I hadn't taken the picture, someone else would have, but I've felt bad for him and his family for a long time. I had kept in contact with him; the last time we spoke was about six months ago, when he was very ill. I sent

54 flowers when I heard that he had died and wrote, "I'm sorry. There are tears in my eyes."

Though the reporting put on a strain on Adams’ emotions, it represents the effect

of truly authentic reporting. He described the impact of the photo as, “At the time, the

image was reprinted around the world and came to symbolize for many the brutality and

anarchy of the war. It also galvanized growing sentiment in America about the futility of

55 the fight - that the war was unwinnable.”

Cronkite’s nightly newscasts were similarly impactful at that time. His “Report From

Vietnam” in 1968, in which he traveled to Saigon to report on the war is credited with swaying the public opinion of the government to a new low. He decreed in his broadcast:

“To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter

54 Adams, Eddie. "Eulogy." Time. June 24, 2001. Accessed January 01, 2019. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,139659,00.html#ixzz2Tnso3aM5. 55 "Eddie Adams' Iconic Vietnam War Photo: What Happened next." BBC News. January 29, 2018. Accessed April 10, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42864421.

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.

56 This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.”

Thus, he rose to the level of a public figure, in the same way that Rachel Maddow and

Anderson Cooper are referred to by their last names, Americans of that day let Cronkite into their homes. And he stayed awhile.

56 Ap, "Highlights of Some Cronkite Broadcasts," CBS News.

Maybe the Best Weren’t the Brightest—Reporting the end of the war

In an episode of The Wonder Years Kevin Arnold remembers just how tumultuous the year post the Tet Offensive was. “In nineteen-sixty-nine, we had the Vietnam war for breakfast, lunch and

57 dinner. I guess it was inevitable that we stopped paying attention.”

Americans were so inundated by the brutalities of the war by 1969 post-Tet that support for continuing the Johnson announced he would not run for re-election, the war seeping all of the life from him and another campaign. In November of 1968, Nixon was elected president, running on the promise of de-escalation. Late in 1969, mass demonstrations against the War were taking place in the States. At the end of November, Nixon attempted to appeal to a “silent majority” to support his policies. In the address, Nixon states, “I believe that one of the reasons for the deep division about Vietnam is that many Americans have lost confidence in what their Government has told them about our policy. The American people cannot and should not be asked to support a policy which involves the overriding issues of war and peace unless they know the truth about that policy.”58 He then attempted to “answer” the questions Americans had about Vietnam in carefully devised press statements with language like “In January I could only conclude that the precipitate withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam would be a disaster not only for South

Vietnam but for the United States and for the cause of peace. For the South Vietnamese, our precipitate withdrawal would inevitably allow the Communists to repeat the massacres which followed their takeover in the North 15 years before.”59 By 1973, presidential job approval was

57 “The Wonder Years,” Episode 17. 58 President Nixon’s Address to the Nation on the War in Vietnam. 59 President Nixon’s Address to the Nation on the War in Vietnam.

33 barely over 25%, the negative coverage from the war and multiple scandals had lowered the

60 opinions of the American people.

However, there wasn’t much support left to be had. 1970 brought mass student protests across the United States, namely the Kent State Massacre of May 4, 1970, that took place just four days after Nixon announced the expansion of the war into Cambodia.

Halberstam stayed with the wartime coverage to the end of the Vietnam War, but by 1972 his tone had shifted. The introduction to his highly acclaimed novel, “The Best and the

Brightest” reads:

“I returned back from Vietnam to America properly depressed. A war which was not winnable was going to play itself out, with, I thought, terrible consequences for both America and Vietnam. I had little time to ruminate on this, for I spent the coming year covering the greatest domestic turbulence caused by the war. 1968 was one of those landmark years in which everything came to a head---or, as in this case, seemed to come apart, marked as it was by the withdrawal of the sitting president from the race, by two tragic assassinations, and by a political process which began in the snows of New Hampshire just as the Tet offensive took place and ended in violence in the streets of Chicago. That year I covered many of those events, and in addition I wrote a small book

61 about Robert Kennedy’s campaign.”

“When the year was over, I felt like someone who had been living for too long on the edge of events. I was exhausted, and I had no sense of what I wanted to do next.”62 Halberstam penned books critical of the government, most notably “The Best and the Brightest,” which uses the name of President Kennedy’s cabinet to detail the complete history of the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.

60 Gallup, “Long-term Gallup Poll Trends: A Portrait of American Public Opinion Through the Century”, 1945-1998, in title of collection italicized, Frank Newport, David W. Moore, editor of collection if available (place of publication, publisher, date),21. 61 The Best and the Brightest,” ix. 62 The Best and the Brightest, ix.

Nick Ut was a Vietnamese photographer based in the Saigon Bureau, working for the

Associated Press. Ut’s most famous photograph was taken of Kim Phuc, a 9-year-old girl screaming in pain after a U.S. commander ordered South Vietnamese planes to drop napalm near her village.

The photo won Ut a Pulitzer. I recently sat in a photojournalism class where my professor led a discussion of some of the most iconic photographs of the past century. One of these was “Napalm Girl”. Much of the room stared with slack jaws. Ut had shocked the world half a century later, via a projector in a humid Florida classroom. Ut’s snapshot reminds us how powerful individual moments in time can be; of how intimate they remain years later. These photos show humans in their rawest forms---love, sickness, strife, death.

TIME Photographer James Nachtwey Presented the ‘Napalm Girl’ With the Dresden

Peace Prize stating, “There was more power and more truth in the pain and suffering of one nine- year-old girl than in all the political spin devised by America’s “best and brightest” to justify an unjust war. Perhaps, more than any other image, out of the thousands of images that were made during the war, it had a disproportionate weight in creating the critical mass in public consciousness that was instrumental in bringing the war to an end. And it stands today as an

63 indictment, not only of the Vietnam War, but of all wars.”

63 Martinez, Gina. "Transcript: James Nachtwey Presents 'Napalm Girl' With Dresden Peace Prize." Time. February 13, 2019. Accessed February 10, 2019. http://time.com/5527944/napalm-girl-dresden-peace-price-james- nachtwey/.

"That photograph illustrated dramatically what had become a regular occurrence in Vietnam over the years — napalm on distant villages, civilians killed and scared by the war, pictures we'd rarely had in the past," said Peter Arnett, a distinguished network news war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner himself. "This picture revealed the kind of details that were an integral part of what the war had been about, which made it so significant and important to be published." The photo was controversial not simply in its reaction. Papers are hesitant to publish nude or graphic photographs, and Ut crossed both lines with this shot. Many papers including The

New York Times eased their policies in this sole case and ran the photo above the fold on the front page.65 This is a high honor reserved for the top news of the day. In addition, photos seldomly make it above the fold. Nixon once questioned the photo’s validity in a conversation on

June 12, 1972, with his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman---"I'm wondering if that was fixed.”66 The

Associated Press (AP) backed up their publication of the photo with an explanation of their ethical code, thereby proving their legitimacy. Vincent J. Alabiso, AP's vice president for photos,

64 "The Terror of War | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time." Time. Accessed February 10, 2019. http://100photos.time.com/photos/nick-ut-terror-war. 65 "The Terror of War | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time." 66 Collins, Dan. "Nixon, The A-Bomb, And Napalm." CBS News. March 01, 2002. Accessed January 01, 2019. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nixon-the-a-bomb-and-napalm-28-02-2002/.

36 responded to Nixon’s accusation with biting criticism: "This picture won the Pulitzer Prize and has withstood the test of time as an important icon of the Vietnam War. Its authenticity has never

67 been questioned. AP's record on accurate and honest reporting is known to all."

Their defense provides a key example as to why ethical codes matter and how they create trust in the organization.

Ut was only 21 when he took that photo on June 8, 1972, then set his camera aside to rush 9-year-old Kim Phuc to a hospital, where doctors saved her life.68 Ut continued this same relationship with Kim throughout the rest of her life, the pair regularly converse to this day.

Ted Koppel reported for ABC News and began covering war in 1966. The journalist hosted Nightline for 26 years and covered everything from the Vietnam War to presidential elections. In an exhibition hosted by the National Archives entitled “Remembering Vietnam,” he discussed his perspective on the American coverage of the Vietnam War and, furthermore, changes he saw in the media landscape in his own lifetime.

“Koppel went on to explain that he believed the American news business had a bias of covering the war from the American perspective. “He understood that there was a country with a local population,” Koppel said. “What we get from him is a sense of what the Vietnamese were thinking and feeling at the time. It troubles me these days we seem to make the same mistakes again…we view everything through our own narrow prism.” During the program, the journalists discussed numerous memories on the Vietnam war, including lost comrades, the limited role women were able to play covering Vietnam, and the differing viewpoints of the news industry executives back home from those who actually covered it. They discussed details of danger in Cambodia, censorship, and their use of code to get information for their stories.

67 Collins, Dan. "Nixon, The A-Bomb, And Napalm." CBS News. 68 "'Napalm Girl' Photographer Nick Ut Looks Back at a Career That Included War's Carnage and Hollywood's Red Carpets." Los Angeles Times. March 13, 2017. Accessed March 01, 2019. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-nick-ut-retirement-20170313-story.html.

“We used references to American comic heroes…when over the course of about 20 minutes we [actually] held a conversation with all of the details that happened

69 in this massacre.”

Throughout the interview, Koppel elaborates on how the media landscape used to be more dependent on a few key stations, which contributed to trust between the public and the audience.

If the viewer only has a few options in terms of programming and only one suits their aesthetic taste and political and social views, Look, when I was a young journalist, if I wanted to be seen and heard in the United States, across the land, I had three options: I could go to ABC, NBC or

CBS, period, end of story. These days, and for a long time, any person with a video camera and a

70 little editing gear and access to the Internet can be a network by himself or herself. …”

Koppel explains how trusting relationships are built between broadcasters and the viewers, juxtaposing them to the media landscape of today: “at least when you're watching Rather -- or these days Bob Schieffer or Katie Couric or Charlie Gibson, or whoever it is who happens to be doing the news -- you've seen them for 20 years, 30 years. You know something about them.

You know they are part of an organization in which what that one person writes doesn't get on the air just the way he or she writes it.”71 Much of this same attitude can be seen today. Most

Americans have a favorite cable network, or at least one they hate.

69 "Journalists Share Vietnam Experiences." National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed April 1, 2019. https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/journalists-share-vietnam-experience. 70 "Journalists Share Vietnam Experiences." National Archives and Records Administration. 71 "Journalists Share Vietnam Experiences." National Archives and Records Administration.

Conclusion

The awakening of the public to the atrocities happening in the war is well summed up by Buffalo

Springfield in their wartime hit “For What it’s Worth”: “It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound.

72 Everybody look what's going down.”

Reporters, especially broadcasters, were able to become fixtures in the public eye, and to played role that reporters had seldomly fallen into before: confidants. Out of the reporters I studied, I would argue that both every reporter I studied became a public figure in their own way.

UT continued on to be photojournalist for the LA times, snapping socialites instead of snipers.

After collecting material for his book, Father Michael Gannon led the Catholic Student Center in

Gainesville, FL. He served as a liaison between the students and the University of Florida in times of social chaos, was widely written about in local papers and died a beloved leader of the community. Halberstam and Malcom Browne are well-renowned as two of the best reporters in modern history. Ted Koppel is a right-wing commentator on FOX News to this day. They all held their own audience.

These journalists profited from the advent of television and a unique set of circumstances never seen before in a conflict. The reporters were a tight knit group with strong connections to the soldiers they were covering. Stories that came out of Vietnam were heartfelt and engaging, proving that American citizens were being fed propaganda by the government back home.

Television was the most important source for news by the 1960s.73 Wartime coverage was broadcast for the first time. Photographers were able to capture in the war in more shots than ever before. The editors of “The Vietnam Experience: Combat Photographers” note that “not

72 Stephen Stills, “For What it’s Worth”, 1966. 73 The Uncensored War, 106.

39 only was Vietnam America’s longest war. It was also the most photographed.”74 The Saigon bureau was also granted more autonomy than ever before, facing less censorship and more ease

75 in transportation.

Thus, I believe that broadcast journalism had the greatest impact on American minds and forced action from lawmakers to end the war. The effect of these personal relationships, specifically Walter Cronkite, between nightly newscast anchors and American families is echoed by the Washington Post’s Tom Shales: “His persona became so prominent in American culture,”

Shales wrote, “that he was credited with massive swings in public opinion, most notably earning credit for turning the public against the Vietnam War after a visit there.” 76 Morley Safer, a colleague of Cronkite also stated: “It is remarkable,” Safer said of Cronkite’s Vietnam broadcast,

“that one anchorman, one reporter, one journalist . . . could really affect the political fate of the

77 country.”

And, true to these testimonies, polling done by the Pew Research Center clearly indicates that trust in the government waned in this period. It is undeniable that this point in American history is when journalists truly penetrated the public psyche. Support for the presidential office dropped from approximately 65% to 25% from the beginning to the end of the war.78 The proliferation of hard-hitting news stories began during the Vietnam War. Reporting has grown even more revealing to this day with the rise of citizen journalism and the 24-hour news cycle.

In my study of Vietnam War reporting, I have noticed one commonality. The American people, and more broadly, the human race, have an innate need to seek out the truth. And,

74 The Vietnam Experience: Combat Photographers,5. 75 Mills, Nick. The Vietnam Experience: Combat Photographer. 76 Pach, Chester. "The Way It Wasn't: Cronkite and Vietnam." 77 "The Way It Wasn't: Cronkite and Vietnam." 78 Gallup, “Long-term Gallup Poll Trends: A Portrait of American Public Opinion Through the Century”.

40 maybe, what reporters leave behind is more than recorded history, it’s the consciousness of a nation.

Acknowledgements

To my thesis adviser, Dr. Matt Jacobs for always believing I had this in me. This project has been the highlight of my undergraduate career. I so appreciate your sage guidance and easy laugh over the past three years. I am forever grateful.

I must also thank Dr. Harland-Jacobs and Luc Houle, for your constant understanding and patience. It has been a pleasure to work with you. I hope I can give back to students one day in the selfless way that the both of you do.

All my thanks to April Hines for helping me seek out every last source in George A. Smathers Libraries. You’re the best librarian I’ve ever had.

To my parents, for giving me the greatest gifts: an education and selfless love. Also, for all of the words, sung and written. And to E, for being my reason for living.

Tomorrow’s gonna be a brighter day.

Bibliography

Primary Sources:

"A Man for All Seasons." News. Accessed April 01, 2019. https://news.ufl.edu/articles/2017/04/a-man-for-all-seasons.html.

By. "Ethical Journalism." The New York Times. January 05, 2018. Accessed December 10, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/ethical- journalism.html#ourDutyToOurReaders.

Halberstam, David. The Best and the Brightest. Bridgewater, NJ: Distributed by Paw Prints/Baker & Taylor, 2008.

Gallup, “Long-term Gallup Poll Trends: A Portrait of American Public Opinion Through the Century”, 1945-1998, in title of collection italicized, Frank Newport, David W. Moore, editor of collection if available (place of publication, publisher, date),21.

"Lyndon B. Johnson: Address at Johns Hopkins University:" The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26877.

Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam Papers

Michael V. Gannon Papers. Special Collections. George A. Smathers Library. University of Florida.

"SPJ Code of Ethics - Society of Professional Journalists." Society of Professional Journalists.

"The Burning Monk | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time." Time. Accessed January 10, 2019. http://100photos.time.com/photos/malcolm-browne-burning-monk.

The New York Times Archives. New York, New York.

The Washington Post Archives. Washington, D.C.

Public Trust in Government: 1958-2019.” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Secondary Sources:

Adams, Eddie. "Eulogy." Time. June 24, 2001. Accessed January 01, 2019. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,139659,00.html#ixzz2Tnso3aM5.

Ap. "Highlights of Some Cronkite Broadcasts." CBS News. July 17, 2009. Accessed April 10, 2019. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/highlights-of-some-cronkite-broadcasts/.

Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007.

Collins, Dan. "Nixon, The A-Bomb, And Napalm." CBS News. March 01, 2002. Accessed January 01, 2019. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nixon-the-a-bomb-and-napalm-28-02-2002/.

"Crisis in Burma." IWR. September 30, 2017. Accessed April 24, 2019. https://iwr.news/crisis- in-burma/.

"Did the News Media, Led by Walter Cronkite, Lose the War in Vietnam?" The News Commenter. Accessed October 20, 2018. https://www.thenewscommenter.com/news/did-the- news-media-led-by-walter-cronkite-lose-the-war-in-vietnam/967853.

"Eddie Adams' Iconic Vietnam War Photo: What Happened next." BBC News. January 29, 2018. Accessed April 10, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42864421.

Hallin, Daniel C. 1986. The "uncensored war": the media and Vietnam. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

Hammond, William M. "The Press in Vietnam as Agent of Defeat: A Critical Examination." Reviews in American History 17, no. 2 (1989): 312-23. doi:10.2307/2702936. Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty. London: Quartet Books, 1978.

"Journalists Share Vietnam Experiences." National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed April 1, 2019. https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/journalists-share-vietnam- experience.

Martinez, Gina. "Transcript: James Nachtwey Presents 'Napalm Girl' With Dresden Peace Prize." Time. February 13, 2019. Accessed February 10, 2019. http://time.com/5527944/napalm-girl- dresden-peace-price-james-nachtwey/.

Mosettig, Michael D. "The Campaign That Changed How Americans Saw the Vietnam War." PBS. January 31, 2018. Accessed April 10, 2019. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/the- campaign-that-changed-how-americans-saw-the-vietnam-war.

Mills, Nick. The Vietnam Experience: Combat Photographer. Boston, MA: Boston Pub., 1983.

'Napalm Girl' Photographer Nick Ut Looks Back at a Career That Included War's Carnage and Hollywood's Red Carpets." Los Angeles Times. March 13, 2017. Accessed March 01, 2019. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-nick-ut-retirement-20170313-story.html.

"News Values and Principles | AP." Associated Press. November 30, 2017. Accessed October 20, 2018. https://www.ap.org/about/news-values-and-principles/.

William J. Searle. "A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (review)." Biography 13, no. 1 (1990): 88-92. https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed October 19, 2018).

O'Brien, Tim. 1990. The things they carried: a work of fiction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Pace, Eric. "Wes Gallagher, 86, President And General Manager of A.P." The New York Times. October 13, 1997. Accessed December 3, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/13/us/wes- gallagher-86-president-and-general-manager-of-ap.html.

"Perspective | Why Americans Still Can't Move past Vietnam." The Washington Post. October 10, 2017. Accessed October 15, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by- history/wp/2017/10/10/why-americans-still-cant-move-past-vietnam/.

"Public Trust in Government: 1958-2019." Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. April 19, 2019. Accessed April 01, 2019. https://www.people-press.org/2019/04/11/public-trust- in-government-1958-2019/.

Sheehan, Neil. A Bright and Shining Lie. New York: Random House, 1988. Halberstam, David. The Best and the Brightest. New York :Random House, 1972.

"The Vietnam War: The Pictures That Moved That Most." Time. Accessed October 10, 2018. http://time.com/vietnam-photos/.

"The Terror of War | 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time." Time. Accessed February 10, 2019. http://100photos.time.com/photos/nick-ut-terror-war.