Guerra De Vietnam

A War Told in Pictures


I. Introduction
II. Media ‘ended’ the war
A. Visual Media
1. Television
2. Newspapers
3. Photographers
B. Today’s media about the war
C. Is it all untrue?
III. Conclusion

An American veteran who fought in the Vietnam War describes: “We the unwilling, led by the incompetent, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful.” (Mr. Leonard) When I read this Istarted thinking about everything else I had read about the war; the causes and consequences; the amount of love and hate it carried; its dedication and laziness; and life, or more accurate, death. Before starting to emphasize I should clarify what I understood about the war’s events. Vietnam had been under foreign rule during most of its history. The seeds of the war were the French colonialrule, following Japanese rule before the end of World War II, and back to French occupation. By 1941 Vietnam was under two different foreign occupations. Here is when Ho Chi Minh, a communist Vietnamese revolutionary leader, appeared and established the Viet Minh. The group’s goal was to gain independence and liberate Vietnam from the Japanese and French occupation. After fighting with each other,the USA got involved to prevent communism of spreading to other Asian countries. In 1954 the French pulled out from Vietnam and an agreement, made at the Geneva conference, “temporarily” split Vietnam in communist North Vietnam and non-communist South Vietnam. After the separation, the Vietnam War is recorded to have started (1955), although in 1959 Ho Chi Minh declares a People’s war to uniteVietnam. According to president Johnson, “[…] U.S. involvement in Vietnam was not for the U.S. to win the war, but for U.S. troops to bolster South Vietnam’s defenses until South Vietnam could take over”(President Johnson). Toward the end of the war, President Nixon as head of the U.S. forces had the plan of Vietnamization, which consisted in handing the fighting to South Vietnam, and the withdrawal ofU.S. forces started on July 1969. This retreat didn’t end the war, since the North and South Vietnam continued to fight each other until 1975 when the south gave into the North’s communism and Vietnam was reunited as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The American retreat from Vietnam had many causes, but one in particular called my attention: the media, the power of the media. This greatresource screamed what needed to be screamed during the last years of war, especially after the Tet offensive and the My Lai Massacre. It is evident that the media (principally visual media) didn’t end the war, but I believe that it was a great part of the equation because it included the public’s opinion, the Americans who fought from their own homes. So, how did the American media affect the public’sopinion about the war? And how did it “end” or “lost” the war?
“A picture is worth a thousand words” This is why the visual media had such a great influence in the American public towards the end of the war. At the beginning of the war, the media was pro-war and they portrayed U.S. soldiers as heroes of their country, but as the war progressed and the media evolved, showing other sides of thewar, the public started questioning whether or not they were heroes. “Before the Vietnam War, the media’s job was to keep the American listeners and readers optimistic and panic free. […] The reporters and photographers did not have as much enthusiasm as they had when they first went to Vietnam; they were finding sad stories and painful pictures” (Kahrs). The media boom included the fact that atelevision was something “new” in every household, so more people were watching the news during the Vietnam War. As always the media has been limited from certain realities that may cause panic, but that didn’t stop Walter Cronkite, a broadcast news reporter, from talking about the war and from becoming “the most trusted man in America”. For example after the Tet Offensive, Cronkite said how the...