Television had a huge impact on the people in America because it shows in source F that 64% of people felt like backing up the boys in Vietnam because of television but 26% said they felt moved to oppose the war because of television. This source might not be correct because we don’t know how they collected the information or what questions they asked to get it so a lot of people would question their accuracy.
The Morley Safer film showed American troops going into a Vietnamese village and shooting with no one shooting back. The only three marines wounded were shot by their own troops. The troops also set fire to Vietnamese thatched huts and killed innocent Vietnamese people. The film might be viewed as a turning point as how the war was reported because the film showed what was really happening in Vietnam. The film might have affected viewers opinions of the actions of the U.S forces because everyone seen what the U.S forces was like and wonder why they done such a thing and it would have changed viewers opinions of the reasons for U.S involvement in Vietnam because people would have been wondering if they are there to help Vietnam stop the spread of communism or to kill for no reason.
Safers film would have changed the way people expected the war to be reported because from then on people probably expected to see troops killing for nothing. Americans at home probably reacted badly to government slogans like “Victory is just around the corner” because they seen what was really happening and thought they wont have a victory if it keeps up like that because if they kill innocent Vietnamese the rest of the innocent Vietnamese people will go to the Vietcong.
The Tet offensive was at the beginning of 1968 when the Vietcong attacked more than 100 towns in South Vietnam. Even though it ended in a military disaster for the Vietcong, the scale of destruction and casualties had a psychological effect on the U.S troops’ will to fight. This type of coverage was likely to effect public opinion of the war because the public in the USA seen all that bad stuff happen to the people they know and they probably wanted them back safe so most people in the United States began to call for a withdrawal.
I think events in My Lai and events in the “fog of war” article were kept a secret because the government knew that it would have changed public opinion and people would have wanted a U.S withdrawal and probably would have protested. They were probably also kept a secret because it would have reflected badly on the U.S troops. The My Lai massacre was probably later publicized because journalists wanted the public to see more of the bad things that the troops were doing out there.
The role of journalists changed during the war because at the start of the war they believed it was their duty to support the troops like calling them “our boys” but later journalists saw it as their duty to force the government to reveal events like the My Lai Massacre that the U.S government would have rather kept a secret.
I t wasn’t just television that changed peoples opinions of the Vietnam war there was also things like protest movements, protest songs like in source K and anti-war songs by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.
Television reporters did not just report events. They commented on them too b talking and telling you all about them and what was happening. TV showed the horrors of war in graphic detail like the safer film that made a lot of opinions change. Many Americans were surprised, horrified and angry with what they saw and probably disgraced at their troops for doing those things like in source I when the soldier stripped the thirteen year old girl. Television also led to a lot of Americans questioning their country’s involvement in the war. It was a combination of factors that led to the shift in the general publics attitude to the war.
Stephen Moore 11F