You just gave a book review. Since I haven’t read it I have included 3 reviews of the book Big Story.
Peter Braestup's book on the reporting of the Tet Offensive is a critically important book to read for those trying to understand the effect of reporters' all-too-human bias on what information the average citizen has available to him or her, as well as for those looking to find out not only what went wrong in Vietnam, but what the United States and its allies (including South Vietnam) did right - an aspect still all too overlooked.
Though it is critical of some particular newspeople, as well as some politicians and military spokemen of the Vietnam era, the book is highly constructive in tone. Many of the lessons pointed out by Braestrup two decades ago have clearly been taken by the media, judging by the general improvement in war reporting during the current (as of fall, 2001) events in Afghanistan . . . .
This book was a real eye-opener for me. As a Vietnam veteran who served in Vietnam in 1967-68-69-70 and 71, I had always held fast to the premise that media coverage of Tet 68 sabotaged the possible successful conclusion of the Vietnam war in our favour. I had always believed that the american press had deliberately skewed their war coverage towards the negative side.
Braestrup's well documented study of press coverage of the Tet 68 offensive made me re-think all my knee jerk attitudes towards the press.
He presents meticulous summaries of coverage by the major american newspapers and television networks. While some individual papers and networks might have had an anti-war bias most tried to give balanced coverage.
When Braestrup gets into the logistical details of the in media coverage of the war, he really enlightens us. It's easy in hindsight to assume that todays wall to wall coverage of world news was the norm in Vietnam. Braestrup shows us in great detail the limitations in personnel and technology that constrained media coverage of the Vietnam war
If you read his analysis, compiled from his own in-country experience with an in depth analysis of most major news outlets reporting from Vietnam during the war, you as a reader are enlightened and forced to rethink your own pre-conceived notions about the subject.
A thorough critique of the press coverage of the Tet Offensive. Amazingly, the press almost universally got it wrong. The U.S. and the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) actually won the battle; the Viet Cong were decimated and never recovered as a fighting force (The regular North Vietnamese Army shouldered the major fighting from then on). It took the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) four years to build up enough strength for another major offensive (1972), which led to the Christmas bombings of Hanoi and the "peace accords." [BTW, the Christmas bombings were another instance of fallacious press reporting]
Written by a journalist, this book is critical but not ideological; the press is not "the bad guy" here. There is plenty of blame to go around. The military misrepresented the strength of the Viet Cong, for its own reasons, and the press went on to misrepresent the battle for its own reasons. The real heresy of this book is revealing how the ARVN and U.S. forces aquitted themselves exceedingly well on the battlefield. Was the war "winnable" on the ground? [perhaps?] It certainly wasn't "winnable" politically, but credit should be given to the servicepeople on the ground (and in the air) who did in fact win the battle tactically and strategically.
Originally Posted by Munchmasterman
Your examples only serve to underscore how the public was mislead by biased and fallacious reporting during the Viet Nam War. And, BTW, you noticeably chose to omit these two reviews:
(1) I just finished this book in the last couple of days. Excellent all the way through. Carefully crafted examples of what was right and
WRONG with the media coverage of the Tet 68 Offensive during the Vietnam war, and the war overall, show the problems with the reporting:
in some glaring cases, the bias. I specifically could relate to recent conflicts the comments made about the speed of a story from the start of an event to publication and how that sometimes led to the wrong analysis and conclusion.
The perceptions set forth by the media, either deliberately or by editing mistakes, to the population were in cases wrong and led people in a path to make decisions based on faulty information. For a long time I wondered if my opinions and own analysis of the Vietnam conflict were ill conceived. This book put those concerns in their proper place: even though it was a terrible event, maybe the US could have been done with it sooner and with a better result for all had the true facts, as the media could gather, come to light for the general population instead of an inherently flawed approach with a lot of bias added.
Given that the book was written by a Journalist in the middle of it all gives great validity to the book: yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
(2) . . .Baestrup tracks the trajectory of the competitive press corps in Vietnam, particularly the television people who were coming into their ascendancy.
For the TV people, images mattered, not facts. They needed material to engage eyeballs, not minds. It was logical that the images be violent even though they didn't tell the true story. The news anchors weren't objective readers of facts: they were advocates of the America as the oppressor theory and they echoed the shouts of the people clogging the streets with their protests.
Braestrup concluded his analysis of the media's performance by calling it "an extreme case", but warned as well - and bear in mind this was in 1977 - that "unsatisfactory performance [of the media] in another surprise crisis or near-crisis appears likely". . .
And again:
Several months after Tet had drawn to a close, “an NBC producer proposed to correct the record with a three-part series showing that Tet had in fact been an enemy defeat. The idea was rejected by higher ups at the network because, a senior producer said, Tet was seen ‘in the public’s mind as a defeat, and therefore it was an American defeat’” (Braestrup).
General No Nguyen Giap, the Supreme Commander of the Viet Minh (NVA) forces said, in a 1989 interview with CBS’s Morley Safer, “The most important result of the Tet offensive was it made you de-escalate the bombing, and it brought you to the negotiation table. It was, therefore, a victory…The war was fought on many fronts. At that time
the most important one was American public opinion.” (
The Vietnam War: An Encyclopedia of Quotations, Howard Langer, 2005).
As suspected, you chose to squirm and equivocate.
Giap wrote a book where he states that the NVA was shattered and the vietcong was destroyed or spent as a fight force after the tet offensive, but he and other generals were shocked at the american media reporting of the war and the behavior of the american public reaction to it. they were close to calling for a conditional surrender, instead they waited it the war out until peace talks.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Won-War-Ng...7114238&sr=1-2
Originally Posted by dilbert firestorm
+1 - It's called: "Giving aid and comfort to the enemy!"
Originally Posted by bigtex
