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The media coverage of the Vietnam War varied in its content over the years of the war. The Vietnam War was the first war to be covered by colored television, vividly displaying the horrors of the war. Newspapers, radio, and televison played a critical role in the public and reflected different views on the war. The balance of media coverage between the support and the criticism of the war was multifarious. From old fashioned newspapers, to newly prevalent colored television broadcasts, output of information of the war was a well-established aspect of the time period of the Vietnam War. The public was at this time was a well-informed mass, affected by the biases of different media outlets.
The media brought the war into American homes. Vietnam was the first war covered in depth on the nightly news. The film coverage showed the realities of warfare: wounded civilians, children who had lost their parents, villages destroyed, American GIs with various gruesome wounds from land mines and artillery fire. Print news, especially magazines, always sells well with sensational photos and Vietnam provided them with plenty. Babies burned by napalm, poor rural villages burned by our soldiers. Many things happen in war that are too terrible and the sight of such things, in glossy vivid color, cannot be forgotten. People would read it and watch it, sitting in their homes, eating dinner, seeing the piles of dead Vietcong and listening to the daily body count. They saw the fresh, young faces of American soldiers and, eventually, came to realize that these young boys were being thrown into a deathtrap. There was also the fact that when faced with conflicting or contradictory accounts, 48% of those surveyed responded that they would trust television, while only 21% responded that they would trust newspapers. The Television has become a trusted source of news for Americans. They saw that with all our money and technology, we were losing. Dead American soldiers are only appreciated if they are winning. 51,000 American deaths for a losing cause turned many Americans against the war.
However, some news depicted the war as a necessary action for the protection of democracy and for the freedoms of the oppressed. The media impacted the public opinion of the war immensely and although some media sources were more bias than others, there was a mix of both pro-war media and anti-war media. [1]
The media coverage of the Vietnam War varied in its content over the years of the war. The Vietnam War was the first war to be covered by colored television, vividly displaying the horrors of the war. Newspapers, radio, and televison played a critical role in the public and reflected different views on the war. The balance of media coverage between the support and the criticism of the war was multifarious. From old fashioned newspapers, to newly prevalent colored television broadcasts, output of information of the war was a well-established aspect of the time period of the Vietnam War. The public was at this time was a well-informed mass, affected by the biases of different media outlets.
The media brought the war into American homes. Vietnam was the first war covered in depth on the nightly news. The film coverage showed the realities of warfare: wounded civilians, children who had lost their parents, villages destroyed, American GIs with various gruesome wounds from land mines and artillery fire. Print news, especially magazines, always sells well with sensational photos and Vietnam provided them with plenty. Babies burned by napalm, poor rural villages burned by our soldiers. Many things happen in war that are too terrible and the sight of such things, in glossy vivid color, cannot be forgotten. People would read it and watch it, sitting in their homes, eating dinner, seeing the piles of dead Vietcong and listening to the daily body count. They saw the fresh, young faces of American soldiers and, eventually, came to realize that these young boys were being thrown into a deathtrap. There was also the fact that when faced with conflicting or contradictory accounts, 48% of those surveyed responded that they would trust television, while only 21% responded that they would trust newspapers. The Television has become a trusted source of news for Americans. They saw that with all our money and technology, we were losing. Dead American soldiers are only appreciated if they are winning. 51,000 American deaths for a losing cause turned many Americans against the war.
However, some news depicted the war as a necessary action for the protection of democracy and for the freedoms of the oppressed. The media impacted the public opinion of the war immensely and although some media sources were more bias than others, there was a mix of both pro-war media and anti-war media. [1]