Vietnam War: Bringing the Battlefield into the American Living Room

Vietnam has gone down in our nation's history as the least successful foreign war that cost 58,000 American lives. However, the battlefield halfway across the world wasn't the only reason why the Vietnam War was a disaster, but media also played a major role in allowing the public back home to watch the battle from their own television screen. Vietnam was the first war to be covered by the media but journalists had no restrictions unlike today where there are pages and pages of rules reporters have to follow. Also, the war in Vietnam was the United States' effort to stop Communism from leaving China and spreading through Vietnam. South Vietnam was losing to North Vietnam and the United States intervened in order to prevent Communism from engulfing all of Vietnam.

During the 1950s, Vietnam was split into two countries; Communist North Vietnam, and Pro-Democracy South Vietnam. The United States first got involved in Vietnam when President Truman sent an American force to aid the French colony. Then in 1959, the Vietnam War had started and it would last for 16 years in which the country would see five different presidents. Dwight Eisenhower was the first to send military advisors to Vietnam to help the South Vietnamese. Next, John F. Kennedy, then Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and the finally Gerald Ford. The United States Military is known around the world as the country not to mess around with but when it came to the Vietnam War they were not ready for this new kind of war. The Viet Cong used their environment to their advantage, the jungles were extremely dense and spooky and lined with boobytraps and VC snipers. They also used guerilla warfare by swiftly attacking the American troops and then running and hiding in the jungles.

The Vietnam War was the first war that was really "experimenting" with new technology and news services in order to show their viewers more graphic and realistic images of a war halfway around the world. However, it would be the first and last American war to have no censorship by the military. New technology allowed the viewers back home to visually experience the war from their living room.  new lightweight cameras allowing cameramen to move with the action and the flow of the battle. Also, color picture allowed a clearer shot of the battlefield. However, the Vietnam war was viewed in a completely different way after the Tet Offensive because of its importance. To Americans, the Tet Offensive was shocking and seen as a major American loss, however, this is not the case.

U.S. soldiers fighting back the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive.

The Tet Offensive was a surprise attack by the VC on their version of New Years, which no one expected. The Viet Cong attacked in one hundred different places, but the place that got hit the hardest was the American controlled Saigon. A suicide squad of VC troops tried to overrun the U.S Embassy but were defeated by the U.S. Camera crews shooting the Vietnam War from the ground were a primary reason why the country turned its back on the already drawn out war. By the 1960s, most of the population was getting their news from their television instead of newspapers. Due to the boom in television viewing, television networks such as CBS, NBC, and CBS combined to have a 35 million viewer audience consistently.  At the beginning of the war and through the the 1960s, the television coverage was very supportive of a pro-war ideal, however, the tides changed after the Tet Offensive. CBS Anchor Walter Cronkite played a key role in changing how the Vietnam war shown to the American people. He took a leap of faith as an anchor because he decided to drop his professionalism and neutrality on the topic in order to share his personal point of view on how the war was going.

A veteran remembering his lost friends.

The Vietnam War lasted for 16 years too long, as most protesters would say, given that this war was the most controversial war in American history. Contributing to the deaths of over 50,000 americans, Nam was also one giant disaster for the United States military. The jungles were so dense that at night that a soldier could not see his own hand in front of his face at night. Also, the style of fighting was unlike anything the U.S. Army had seen. The Viet Cong were guerrilla fighters, that means they would use small but swift attacks and then disappear into the jungle. What made Vietnam so different was the media coverage. All of the network stations would broadcast battles in Vietnam of American soldiers fighting the Viet Cong. All of America was watching on their television screens, families would tune in together to watch the latest update on the war. However, this was the last war to have no limitations for the press in covering the events. Today, we see bits and pieces of the war in Iraq but the media has certain restrictions to what they can shoot, where they can go, who they can talk to, and what story they can cover. A lot has changed since the Vietnam War, but it will always be remembered as an American defeat.