Television and Vietnam

The 1960s was a period of "rising affluence" and "consensus"

Peter Arnett with burned-out airplane near Bien Hoa in 1965 (AP)

• McHale's Navy, Gomer Pyle, Hogan's Heroes, F Troop, Wild Wild West

1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution

• gave LBJ authority for "all necessary measures"
• began "massive escalation" of the war
• press cooperated, no "really big falsehoods" but only "endless little ones" according to John Mecklin of London Times
• "racism became a patriotic virtue"
• Gen. James Hollingsworth of the Big Red One
• Peter Arnett became hard-boiled, never involved, but won Pulitzer Prize 1966 and stayed in Vietnam 13 years for AP, then went to CNN and stayed in Baghdad for the Gulf War in 1991
• Larry Burrows shielded his readers from the horror
• combat footage edited down to 3 minutes, lost its context, horror

telefilms of "paranoia" 1964-66

• Bill Cosby and Robert Culp in I Spy
• Robert Vaughn in Man from U.N.C.L.E.
• Peter Graves in Mission Impossible "enshrined the official lie"

Buddhist monk (Time 1963)

Tet attack in Saigon, Life 1968/02/09

Loan executes a VC, by AP's Eddie Adams

Harry Rasky in 1965 filmed the war from the USS Kitty Hawk

• "Alice-in-Wonderland" feeling
• photo op of 20 ships in TF77 was expensive public relations (was a better tactice than censorship)
• narrated by Glenn Ford from script written in NY
• Rasky wroteLetters to Holly, about what he felt, not what he saw

Vietnam consensus broke down

• David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan quoted John Vann after 1963 Ap Bac defeat
• Malcolm Browne photographed immolation of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc 6/9/63
• But correspondents only critical of effectiveness, not intervention itself
• few stories of Diem's corruption, CIA's Air America, massive heroin addiction
• World War II analogy failed
• William Fulbright, Morely Safer, Eric Sevareid
• Pacific radio went to North Vietnam, challenged the "no-guts journalism" of the commercial media
• LBJ "credibility gap"
• Felix Greene produced Inside North Vietnam in 1967, rejected by CBS, shown on NET

1968

• Tet offensive caused Walter Cronkite to change
• death of M. L. King, R. F. Kennedy
• Democratic convention in Mayor Daley's Chicago
• no more opening shootout on Gunsmoke

Nixon era of "upheavals" 1969-74

• caused TV to become "fortress" a psychological refuge
• family shows Bonanza, Big Valley, Addams Family
• "prime time world" celebrated "American ethic of hegemony and supremacy"
• power shows I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched
• beautiful people, glitter, success, fortune
• Nixon promised to end war, but expanded
• atrocities of My Lai, defoliation, lawnmower bombing
• "rising opposition" of TV documentaries Selling of the Pentagon, Who Invited Us?, Behind the Lines
• Lessons of Vietnam

Watergate 1972-74 "came at a crucial moment in the history of public television"

• televised hearings in Congress by Sen. Sam Ervin
• TV cannot be a "neutral conduit" when the conduit is controlled by the establishment
• TV can be an ombudsman finding problems and revealing solutions

"Power of Pictures," part 4 of Television series on PBS hosted by Edwin Newman, 1987

Links:

• Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam 1964-1969
• Richard Nixon and Vietnam 1969-1974
• Reagan Presidency 1981-1985 and 1985-1989
• George Bush Presidency 1989-1993
• Gulf War 1991

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