COVERING THE WAR
April 20, 2000

In a continuing look at the legacy of the Vietnam War, media correspondent Terence Smith talks with four guests about the war's effects on journalism after this background report. Online Special: Journalists discuss reporting from the battlefield. Online Forum: Share your memories from the Vietnam Era. The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Online Special Special Report: Journalists discuss reporting from Vietnam's battlefields. Forum: Share your memories from the Vietnam war era. April 12, 2000: A discussion on the Vietnam War's effects on the military. April 5, 2000: A look at the Vietnam War's historical impact NewsHour Archives: Jan. 21, 1977: Carter's Pardon May 29, 1978: The Forgotten Wounded April 30, 1985: Lessons Learned April 30, 1990: Healing the Wounds April 17, 1995: Robert McNamara July 11, 1995: Normalizing Relations     March 23, 2000: Secretary of Defense Cohen discusses his trip to Vietnam. Aug. 9, 1999: A discussion of trade with the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. May 15, 1997: Normalizing relations with Vietnam. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Asia.     PBS/The American Experience: Vietnam PBS/POV: RE:Vietnam U.S. State Department	TERENCE SMITH: The typical American family in 1960, gathered around the television during the medium's Golden Era. (Portion of "I Love Lucy") TERENCE SMITH: Delighted by Lucy. (Portion of "Andy Griffith") TERENCE SMITH: Tickled by the folks in Mayberry. But by mid-decade, sobering images of Americans at war halfway around the world began to intrude. And print accounts detailed a rapidly escalating conflict in a place called Vietnam, a distant battleground of the Cold War. Early in the war, American reporters questioned the effectiveness -- but not the overall purpose -- of the mission. They duly catalogued the number of troops deployed and ordinance dropped -- figures the military said depicted a successful effort. But soon the images at the front began to contradict the official view from Washington....In 1965, CBS news correspondent Morley Safer filed this report from the village of Cam Ne: a portrait of Marines trying to flush out an elusive foe… MORLEY SAFER: This is what the war in Vietnam is all about...the old and the very young...the Marines have burned this old couple's cottage because fire was coming from here. TERENCE SMITH: American casualties mounted; months gave way to years...and television began to feature body counts weekly on the evening news...a turning point in the coverage: the 1968 Tet Offensive....the American defense of Saigon was militarily successful but a public perception nightmare for the policymakers in Washington. Massive reinforcements were requested. Weeks after Tet, CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, returning from the front, had this to say: WALTER CRONKITE, CBS: (February 27, 1968) It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out, then, will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.
	Tensions between press and government
	TERENCE SMITH: President Lyndon Johnson is said to have remarked after watching the commentary...."If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America." Television continued to showcase pictures of devastating American casualties... and 148 news people, like so many American soldiers, did not return -- journalists, like the renowned war correspondent Dickey Chapelle, herself a victim of a fateful footfall - and the great Larry Burrows of Life Magazine, whose camera chronicled the war unflinchingly, shot down over Laos. Many others were wounded, including Time's David Greenway, who was hit trying to rescue a wounded Marine during the battle for Hue. The Marines later awarded him a Bronze Star for valor. An openly adversarial relationship developed between the press and the presidency during the Johnson years; it continued to grow with his successor. President Nixon, elected on the strength of his secret plan to end the war, instead expanded operations into Cambodia. ABC's Steve Bell was there. STEVE BELL, ABC: As best we can tell this is the South Vietnamese command post for the operation into the Cambodian parrot's beak. But the strictest type of security is being enforced here -- even to the point where the one American adviser we've seen warned us not to ask questions. MILITARY SPOKESMAN: No comment, nothing further to say! TERENCE SMITH: Military briefings in Saigon, famous for their lack of information, were derisively dismissed by reports as the "5 O'clock Follies." In 1970, at the height of tensions between press and President....Vice President Spiro Agnew, never an admirer of the media, lashed out venomously at the television networks: VICE PRESIDENT SPIRO AGNEW: Perhaps the place to start looking for a credibility gap is not in the offices of government in Washington but in the studios of the networks in New York... TERENCE SMITH: Of course, President Nixon had problems beyond the war. Watergate served only to exacerbate an already poisoned relationship between the press and the presidency. American involvement ended amidst the rotor wash thundering from the roof of the American embassy in Saigon. Reporters covered the evacuation and have wrestled with the legacy ever since.

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