The war on colour TV screens in America’s living rooms have made Americans far more anti war than anything else. The full brutality of the combat will be there in close up and in colour and blood looks very red on a colour television screen

One of the main things that TV did to change public opinion of the war was the broadcasting of pictures of dead or wounded US soldiers. This is explained in the start of source F; this tells us that American soldiers were being killed and that journalists were witnessing this horrible scene. It also explains that the American public heard that the South Vietnamese peasants who they were meant to be protecting were the ones who were killing US soldiers.

Another thing that the American public would have seen on their TV screens was the committing of atrocities by American soldiers on the South Vietnamese civilians, the ones they were meant to be protecting. This is shown very graphically in source E that shows two young Vietnamese children who have suffered from the American bombing attacks and are running away from the American soldiers. This is also mentioned in Source G that reports on the My Lai massacre in 1968. It tells us about the soldiers killing innocent Vietnamese children and women and the writer also likens the soldiers who committed this massacre were like Nazis. GI’s committing atrocities would also have outraged the American public because Americans had been brought up with the belief that their country was the most humane in the world and pictures of GI’s and bombs killing innocent Vietnamese would have prompted the US public into opposing the war.

The third thing that the American public would have seen on their TV screens was opposition to the war in their own country. This came in a number of forms. One of these was student demonstrators and the Hippie movement and is shown in Source J. This source shows demonstrations at Kent State University and it was at this demonstration that the National Guard killed four demonstrators. The second one was the opposition of many influencual people to the war in Vietnam, who included songwriters like Bob Dylan who wrote protest songs against the Vietnam War. Other groups that were opposed to the war included the British magazine Punch that published the picture in source H that shows the great American society being burned to fuel Vietnam.  

In conclusion the sources suggest that television played a major part in the US defeat in Vietnam because it allowed people to see what was really happening in Vietnam. Television also allowed people to see that there was opposition to the war in their own country. Source J shows this in the form of a student protests and this kind of coverage would have prompted the American public to speak out against the war in Vietnam. Another thing that would have had an effect on the American public would be images of dead or wounded GI’s. This would have had a massive effect on the views of the American public because the people had been used to seeing American GI’s beating their opponents and the images of dead and wounded GI’s would have prompted the people to speak out against the war. On the other hand TV was used to broadcast government propaganda, saying that the US were actually winning the war and it was more important to stop the communists than to save lives. It also denied the anti-war propaganda by implying that it was just a load of drug taking hippies who didn’t want to work. However this use of propaganda by the government could have made the people confused and so led them to distrust the government. Overall these reasons and the effect of the government confusing the public would have led public opinion to swing away from the war and this would have led the government to seek to negotiate with the North Vietnamese because of the fear of not being re-elected.