The Television War

Vietnam was the first "television war. The first "living-room war," it began in mid-1965, when Lyndon Johnson dispatched large numbers of U.S. combat troops, beginning what is still surely the biggest story television news has ever covered. What was the effect of television on the development and outcome of the war? The conventional wisdom has generally been that for better or for worse it was an anti-war influence. It brought the "horror of war" night after night into people's living rooms and eventually inspired revulsion and exhaustion. Television would eventually lose public support of the broadcasts of the war. There were, to be sure, occasions when television did deliver images of violence and suffering. In August 1965, after a series of high-level discussions which illustrate the unprecedented character of the story, CBS aired a report by Morley Safer which showed Marines lighting the thatched roofs of the village of Cam Ne with Zippo lighters, and included critical commentary on the treatment of the villagers. These incidents were dramatic, but far from typical of Vietnam coverage. Blood and gore were rarely shown. A bit less than a quarter of film reports from Vietnam showed images of the dead or wounded. Television crews quickly learned that what New York wanted was "bang-bang" footage, and this, along with the emphasis on the American soldier, meant that coverage of Vietnamese politics and of the Vietnamese generally was quite limited.