The uncensored war

Abstract

It has come to be widely accepted across the political spectrum that the relation between the media and the government during Vietnam was one of conflict: The media contradicted the more positive view of the war officials sought to project, and for better or worse it was the journalists' view that prevailed with the public, whose disenchantment forced an end to American involvement. Often this view is coupled with its corollary, that no “televised war” can long retain political support. These views are shared not only in the United States but abroad as well; it was the example of Vietnam, for instance, that motivated the British government to impose tight controls on news coverage of the Falklands crisis. Back at home, the Reagan administration, with Vietnam again in mind, excluded the media from the opening phase of the Grenada invasion. Vietnam coincided with a number of other dramatic political events in which the media's role was central. First was the civil rights movement, played out largely on a media stage, then the urban conflicts of the late 1960s, the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the rise of a host of new political movements, and finally Watergate. The apparently growing prominence of the media coincided with what seemed to be a crisis in political institutions: public confidence in government declined dramatically during these years, public attachment to both political parties weakened, and the political system began a twenty‐year period during which not a single president would serve two full terms of office. These developments, along with Vietnam, provoked a broader controversy about the relation of the media to American government institutions.

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