Relationship between News and Peace in the Vietnam War - Report Example

Relationship between News and Peace in the Vietnam War History of the Vietnam War There was the first Indochina war that began in the year 1946-1954. The Americans started to prepare for the civil war in 1860 while the French began to have a long term significant involvement in Indochina. Indochina was made up of three countries that are popularly known as Vietnam Laos and Cambodia. The French was after the riches of the lands that the country occupied. After the World War 1, Indochina started to rebel against the French under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, who held a Marxist point of view. Japan invaded Vietnam during the World War 2 and managed to overtake the French rule (Kinnard, 2004). However, Ho managed to form a guerilla warfare group known as the Viet Minh, which successfully fought the Japanese. Ho then introduced a new country by the name the new nation of Vietnam. The French was still interested in maintaining its rule in the country after the Second World War. The Americans believed that a communist community in the south of Vietnam would lead to the rise of other communist victories in the southeast of Asia which was an unthinkable action. Therefore, the United States decided to support France by providing money. A fight, therefore, ensued between the two sides the northern and the southern side. The French were worn down by Viet Minh and hence retreated leaving the country divided (Dougan et al., 2002). The northern part of the country was led by Ho Chi Minh and the southern side led by Ngo Dinh Diem. The division of the country into two parts was a temporary decision before the country held temporary elections. South Vietnam sensed defeat and ensured that the elections would never be held. The United States continued providing funds to South Vietnam in a bid to ensure that the country did not become a communist state. The north managed to form a guerilla in the southern state with the aim of overtaking the military rule and reuniting the two parts of the country. At this juncture, the United States was seen to support an unfavorable leader Ngo Dinh Diem who as corrupt and did not have any democratic commitments. He was however killed in a coup. Unfortunately, the leaders who followed were not any better than Diem. On the other hand, Ho Chi Minh was viewed as a charismatic leader and managed to gain a lot of support from the people (Dunnigan & Albert, 2000). A few weeks after Diem was killed, the president of the United States J. F. Kennedy was assassinated. The deputy president took on leadership after Vietnam was bitterly divided. Vietnam was divided into two parts in the year 1954 according to the Geneva records as another war in Korea was brewing, so the divide was meant to pacify the states that were involved in the fight. The attempts to unite the two countries after the general elections were futile as a series of events led to a bitter fight not only among the Vietnamese people but also among the Americans, Australians, and New Zealand. Although the Americans intended to keep their involvement in the war to a minimum, they were keen to ensure that the country did not become a communist state. With time, it was clear the French troops needed help in battling the north since the North was willing to fight the war and tire the enemy regardless of the manpower they had to use in order to gain independence (Weist 2003). However, the United States was not fully committed to helping the French continue with what seemed to be the world war three. It was a dangerous situation for the French as it seemed like they would not be able to win the war (Mintz 2007). The United States was not for the idea of splitting Vietnam in order to ensure that the two sides of the country could rule themselves as they wished. The United States, therefore, decided to support the southern side of the state and to control the government directly which marked the beginning of United States involvement in the war (Nelson 1999). The United States entered the war gradually where the kind of involvement transitioned from providing support for France and finally moved to providing troops to fight in the war. In a few years, the United States of America had provided the French with about 2.6 billion dollars to help in rehabilitating Indochina. However, this was barely enough as the war raged on and the loss of manpower experienced by France (Mintz, 2007). The United States was informal as they only just sent out troops to South Vietnam. The total number of troops sent out was 2000 soldiers, and the authorization was done by John F. Kennedy (Nelson, 1999). According to Jones, (2003) Kennedy was forced to prioritize the Vietnam War and have more stringent measures against the guerillas due to the Cold War. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the country was led by Lyndon Johnson, who brought the actual war to the country. He increased the participation of America in the war by sending out more troops and being more involved in the activities of the Southern guerrillas (Pike, 2005). By the time the war was coming to an end, a total of 140 million dollars had been used, and 2.7million soldiers sent to the war front in Vietnam. The aim of America in the war remains unclear over the years. The various presidents who ruled the country during the Vietnam War all had one thing in common. They all viewed North Vietnam as perpetrators of a communist regime, and this was against the values of Americans who were proponents of democracy (Nelson 1999). The United States policy makers believed that communism promoted human rights abuse and did not permit free trade. If the entire Vietnam fell into a communist state, then communism would likely spread to the nearby countries. Therefore, the United States felt that they had the duty to prevent this from happening and created a puppet Vietnamese government in order carry out their mission. With time, however, the United States believed that they would be fighting an unending war since the north were not retreating and did not tire. The support that North Vietnam had from the Republic of China and Soviet Union enabled them to engage in the war for as long as they managed (Pike 2005). There were many questions regarding the involvement of the US in the war while the presidents feared backlash from the citizens if they withdrew from the Vietnam war (Nelson 1999). Most leaders during the war period interpreted retraction of the war as defeat. It was soon evident that although the initial intention was to stop the spread of communism in Asia, it was not the only thing that fuelled the war to continue longer than it should have. By June 1969, President Nixon started withdrawing troops from Vietnam. This was after the Tet offensive which led to the My Lai massacre. President Nixon gradually reduced the troops from Vietnam until the south could handle the war on its own. However, his decision to invade Cambodia was met with a lot of protests from students and the clergy in April 1970. By 1972, the United States had withdrawn almost all of their combat troops from Vietnam due public demands that continuing with the war was futile, and already so many lives had been lost. Media Representations of Conflict The way that the media represented the war played a huge role in ensuring that the public had the complete facts in the going on of the war. The media played a huge role in shaping the opinions of the public about the war. Millions of the United States citizens were able to see graphic images of the sufferings that the people in Vietnam were going through. The media representations of the war gave rise to anti-war movements resulting in massive protests throughout the country. For almost ten years, the citizens witnessed the Vietnamese houses being destroyed, children being burnt to death and the bodies of American soldiers being flown back into the country. The media in the beginning supported the United States participation in the war but after it became apparent that the war was doing more harm than good and after the My Lai Massacre, their reporting changed as well. The Vietnam War was the first war ever to allow media coverage and so in this sense it made history. Before the Vietnam War, any reports on war were handled by the government and were mostly designed to suit the interests in the government policies. The Vietnam War was the first war where journalists were allowed or given the freedom to report events as they wished and without censorship. The events were captured as they happened, and this was the first time the events of the war were brought to the American families. Lack of censorship over what was being reported resulted in gruesome images and events that largely shaped public opinion. The way that the media portrayed this information led to a fall-out between the press and the government of the United States (Heuveline, 2001). Unlike the previous reports, much of what journalists reported about the Vietnam War defied government policies. The media presented the stories in a way that destabilized the political agenda of the government and also largely negated the public opinion. The ability of the media to report without censorship at the beginning was not a point of contention between the government and the media. The lack of censorship by the government was not there simply because, in the beginning, the war in Vietnam was not an interesting topic to the US citizens. America had just won the World War 2 and had also just defeated Korea, so there was little attention paid to what was happening in Vietnam. At the time, the cold war was more popular, and the Vietnam was considered to be part of Americas efforts against communism. The media concentrated on reporting news that reflected communist and anti-communist decisions that were common in America. As long as the war remained small, the government would not have had any trouble with the media (Hallin, 1986). The media largely remained friendly in the early 1960s when John F. Kennedy was president. The war still reported what they were told by the government whereby the information was mostly incomplete and conflicting. The media, however, started publishing more and more of the happenings as the war got bigger and therefore representing the facts as they were happening. Once more troops were being sent to the ground, the media and the national attention to the war grew immensely. President Lyndon believed that the media was the enemy as it presented major problems with how he was handling the problem. Lyndon wanted the public to see that they were winning the war while this was far from the truth. Lyndon believed that the media was the cause of the lack of support from the public and also for undermining his efforts. The way that the war ended was dependent on the media scrutiny and portrayal. This is because of the publics involvement of what needed to be done and the pressure they put on the government after seeing what was in the media. The media shaped the perceptions of the people through the way they portrayed the information from the war. Whether the stories were real or imagined, they gave the American people the idea that war was an ugly thing and hence should oppose it. The anti-war movements started gaining ground hence more coverage than what the war was getting in the first place (McLaughlin, 2004). The soldier at the battle front was forgotten in order for reports in the war to be made. It was clear that the media coverage was not only graphic, but also painted the United States in a negative light. Since the media was free to report events accurately as they had seen, they criticized the tactics used by the American government and made it look like America was a merciless army that killed innocent civilians. Most of the reports by the media were one-sided as the media made it look like they America was doing something wrong that needed to be stopped while the evils done by North Vietnam and Viet Cong were largely unreported (Keyes, 2006). As a result, Viet Cong and North Vietnam gained more support from the American public although the support was gained through a biased media. The people on either sides of the war believed that that the media was powerful in influencing public opinion on the war and so President Lyndon ensured that the military leaders frequently issued reports on the progress so that the public would sympathize with him. The reports were to give facts and figures that claimed that they were winning the war against the communists. However, this further created conflict among the American population as they witnessed a different story when they watched the reports by the media (McLaughlin, 2004). There was a gap in the credibility, and the public was torn on which side was telling the truth. It was clear that whatever the Americans saw on television or heard from politicians was not always the true reflections of what was happening. The government and the military were able to hide the situation for years before they were discovered by the media. A good example is where an entire village was killed for no reason yet they were civilians. This was the My Lai Massacre where a group of American soldiers gave orders to kill all the villagers in My Lai, which was a village in South Vietnam. They were acting on information that a village had been helping North Vietnam, and, even though, no one in the village offered any resistance, they were led into a ditch and the American soldiers opened fire. This story was covered by the military for almost a year but eventually the media uncovered it much to the shock of the American population. This damaged the reputation of the American soldiers significantly and, even though, initial reports stated that they had killed one hundred enemy soldiers, they had in fact killed over three hundred and fifty civilians (McLaughlin, 2004). The media had better coverage of the events as they were happening and revealed facts that the government attempted to hide from the public. For instance, it was soon revealed that the Vietnamese army was not as committed as the United States army to the war. It was unclear what the United States troops were dong in the face of unmotivated Vietnamese soldiers (Sihanouk, 1958). While Americans believed that the role of the US troops was to help the South Vietnam army, they were indeed the major players in the war. This fact further fuelled the anger of the American citizens. One soldier in the Vietnam army was particularly noted when he claimed that they were there to fight although if trouble arose, then they would run away (Hammond, 1998). It looked as though they did not want to fight in the first place, and they were only in the war due to constant pressure from the United States. What angered most of the American citizens was the fact that more and more soldiers were being killed in a fight that was not theirs and so did not have to participate. The anti-war movement in the US was by far the most important movement in the history of the United States. The movement believed that the American government denied the people of Vietnam the right to decide if they wanted to fight against the North and communism or not. They believed that the American soldiers had no right whatsoever to be there, and their actions were at the very least immoral. Their belief that it was wrong to invade another country and the depictions of war by the media helped to fuel the anti-war movement. The movement radically changed the American policy and forced the United States army out of Vietnam. According to the research conducted by Schreiber in 1976, the demonstrations by the protesters did not have a major effect in changing the public opinion of the citizens. On several occasions, Ho Chi Minh was quoted expressing his gratitude to the anti-war protester although it was clear that he never once thought that they could in any way change the decision of the American government in regards to the war (Schreiber, 1976). Although most people would believe that the protesters main aim was the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, it soon became apparent that they wanted to educate the public on the effects of war. It was found that the people were not necessarily incited by the anti-protesters but rather were influenced by the gruesome information presented to them by the anti-war movements (Schreiber, 1976). However, as time went by, the people started fearing the anti-war protests as the media increased their coverage. Some were afraid that their children would join the fight against war hence no longer watched the news. The government, on the other hand, ensured that they sidelined the anti-war movement accusing them of promoting communism. The media helped the government to enhance further distrust among the public regarding the Anti-war movement. They portrayed the movements as more concerned with the benefits of communism as opposed to the effects of war (Gitlin 1980). Social Consequences of Understanding the Conflict through the Representations Given The way that the media presented the war into the homes of the American shifted the peoples trust. The American population started putting its faith towards the media rather than the government. They relied for most of its information on the media since they believed they gave a fair representation of the war than the reports given to them by the government agents. Many researchers found that there were differences in the way that the war was portrayed and in the end the way that the journalist described it was held by the public opinion. The citizens of the US felt that the government had betrayed them by giving them doctored information regarding the Vietnam War (Zimmer, 2001). The government hid a lot of important information or manipulated the information deliberately. The public placed a lot of pressure on the government to withdraw from Vietnam due to what they had seen in the media. The Trilateral Commission carried out a research in 1975 to examine the impact of journalistic freedom on the government and it was found that the more that the media developed, the more the government authority was undermined. This report was released during the conflict itself, and the views were held widely by many scholars to the present day. A televised speech was made regarding the policy towards Vietnam was made on the third of November 1969, by President Nixon. In the speech, he promised to continue supporting South Vietnam and gave out a plan to withdraw the American troops from Vietnam (Mandelbaum, 1982). The speech gave hope to the American citizens that the government would withdraw the troops from Vietnam although it was still not clear how and when it would happen. He intended to gag the media regarding this issue and, therefore, limited the access to information within Vietnam. However, at this point, the media had already influenced the perception of the people permanently and the glorious image that the people had before the Tet period was permanently erased. According to Daniel Hallin, the coverage only started to differ when the consensus dropped. At the end of the war, the coverage of the media was gagged although it could not change the opinions of the public regarding the war. As the commitment of the United States reduced, there was massive interest by the media to release reports on the casualties from both sides. The reports covered the loss of morale, drug abuse, issues regarding racism and general indiscipline among the American soldiers (McMahon, 1995). The government refused to accept that the situation was as bad as the media portrayed it to be and hence lost more trust among the people. The fact that the government wanted to control the media clearly showed that there was something the government was trying to keep from the public eye. The media clearly knew more about the war in Vietnam than the policy makers since they were on the ground and witnessed the live events of the war. The information was further verified by photos and videos of Vietnamese soldiers or children running away from the battlefields. The media in this case reported in a way to make the dominating partner seem more important. The reporting in Vietnam made the politicians afraid of the media and created the Vietnam Syndrome. The Vietnam syndrome made the politicians believe that the media would always portray information in a manner to destabilize their policies and alter the support of the public. One way in which the government tried to avoid this was to steer clear of circumstances of conflict or controversy (Church, 2006). Another effective way was to control the conditions by controlling the messages that were relayed to the media. In conclusion, the fact of the matter was that the war took on so much longer than it ought to have taken. The involvement of the media and portrayal of the events helped in ending the war earlier and hence reduced the number of people killed and the damage done to the villages. The impact of the media in influencing the public opinion regarding the war was undeniable (Merle, 2003). The photo and video evidence given spoke for themselves and the media had the power to choose what to relay to the public and decided to convey the gruesome pictures. The images that the media presented to the public changed their opinion from the glorious anti-communism war to a destructive war and pointless one for that matter (Soames, 2005). The fact that more and more soldiers continued to die in the war made the protests by the Americans even more severe, and pressure mounted on the government to withdraw the troops. The media had the power to shape the opinion of the people regarding the war and hence indirectly pressure the government to do as the people wanted which was to remove the troops from the war. The goal was ultimately achieved after so much damage had been done and people killed unnecessarily. References Anderson, David L. (2004). Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War. New York: Columbia University Press Andy Weiss (2002). The Vietnam war 1956-1975. New York: Osprey Publishing. Clark Dougan, David Fulgham et al., (1985) The Fall of the South. Boston: Boston Publishing Company, p. 22. Daniel C. Hallin, (1986). The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, p.9 Deborah Nelson (2008). The war behind me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the truth about US war crimes. New York. Basic Books Douglas Kinnard, (1977). The War Managers. Hanover NH: University Press of New England, pgs 126 & 127. Dunnigan, James & Nofi, Albert. 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