The Media's Impact on Society During the Vietnam War

Marshall McLuhan

     Marshall McLuhan once said, "Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America, not on the battle fields of Vietnam." The United States had fought in many wars prior to Vietnam, but this was the first war to ever be televised to the American people. Unlike wars that are reported today, with an abundance of government interference, the Vietnam War was televised with hardly any government interference at all. Due to new technologies, the press was now capable of showing images of wounded American soldiers, and also publishing video reports straight from the battlefield. Americans back home could now see the gruesome actions happening in Vietnam, because of this what impact did media have on society during the Vietnam War? 
     
     The media had a huge impact on society during Vietnam. The disturbing imagery of dead and critically wounded women, children, and elderly shaped people's opinions on the war. American citizens were outraged by what they were seeing on television and reading in the newspapers.

     While reading a post called, "The Media and the Vietnam War, Truthful or Deceptive?" I was shocked at the fact that the media was allowed to film almost anywhere they wanted to during Vietnam. This led the media to "film ugly battles and bombings from up close, and increased the level of shocking imagery incredibly." In the essay, it says that "to reach this goal many recorded material was edited to increase the intensity of the film or photo." Since media during Vietnam lacked government interference, it allowed for them to publish whatever they desired no matter how much of it was fake or a lie. 


     One of the most horrifying things to come out to the public about Vietnam were the Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon Papers "revealed that the Harry S. Truman administration gave military aid to France in its colonial war against the communist-led Viet Minh, thus directly involving the United States in Vietnam; that in 1954 Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam and to undermine the new communist regime of North Vietnam; that Pres. John F. Kennedy transformed the policy of “limited-risk gamble” that he had inherited into a policy of “broad commitment”; that Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson intensified covert warfare against North Vietnam and began planning to wage overt war in 1964, a full year before the depth of U.S. involvement was publicly revealed; and that Johnson ordered the bombing of North Vietnam in 1965 despite the judgment of the U.S. intelligence community that it would not cause the North Vietnamese to cease their support of the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam." The author said, "the Pentagon Papers once again shocked the world about the systematic lies and deception from the presidents and their governments, however almost no actions were taken, mainly because the reports were from the era 1945-1967 and these files were only published in 1971." The Pentagon wanted to keep everything under the radar in order to keep the reputations of the soldiers in good terms with the American people back home. The release of the Pentagon Papers enraged Americans even more about the war and caused civilians to protest.

      Media quickly began to follow the public opinion of the war, and started to report on anti-war protests instead of actually covering the war itself. The media impacted society drastically during Vietnam because, it was the first televised war and the amount of images and videos the public got to see shaped the public's opinion of the entire Vietnam war.