Evolution of War Reporting

The Evolution of War Reporting

The concept of a national press changes in Vietnam as the first “Television War.”

There are a number of good books on the history of war reporting…..The First Casualty by Philip Knightly (he also wrote The Second Oldest Profession about intelligence) and also many photo books (see especially the works of Matthew Brady and Timothy O’Sullivan) on how early news reporting of wars evolved.

For this seminar, the main points are the On-The-Team reporting of World War II where news correspondents wore military uniforms with an arched “Correspondent” tab similar to a Ranger or Airborne tab. These U.S. reporters saw themselves as part of the national war effort.

The concept of the “background briefing” also came out of World War II. General of the Army George C. Marshall held nearly weekly backgrounders for top editors and national reporters to field off-the-record questions and provide not-for-attribution or off-the-record answers on the war effort. Deals were made with reporters and news agencies by the U.S. government. When, for example, the New York Times learned of the atomic bomb, the Pentagon asked for no release of the information in exchange for a seat on the bomber dropping the first nuclear device.

During World War II, reporters had their dispatches censored just as the G.I.s had their V-mail censored. Censoring mail and checking on telephone messages were routine for the U.S. military.

The Korean War was a little different….started in a confusing manner and then overnight became a United Nations police action, so censorship issues were confused. While the U.S. might have some control over reporters, other nations, like the Turks and French might be routinely passing on information for publication.

Due to the political fiction of Vietnam (struggling democratic nation seeking U.S. help against godless commies) there was no declaration of war, no UN mandate, just a slowly increasing U.S. military involvement in essentially a civil war……so there was no censorship. (President Johnson three times asked for studies on the possibility of censorship but never had the political clout to impose it.)

Faulkner’s dissertation is Bao Chi: The U.S. News Media in Vietnam 1960-1975 and is available online via the UMass Library.

As the U.S. involvement in South Vietnam grew, there was a parallel (and nearly man-for-man) increase in North Vietnamese strength in the southern part of Vietnam. The U.S. government decided to ignore the Geneva Accords calling for free elections on unification (and did this with political spin, saying “We cannot allow elections because the Communists would win – because we all know they cheat!”)

A lobbying group, The American Friends of Vietnam, Inc., mounted a major public relations campaign in the Fifties touting an unknown Catholic as “the George Washington of Asia” but when Ngo Dinh Diem was faltering in the predominantly Buddhist nation, the U.S. encouraged a coup against him in November 1963.

Lyndon Baines Johnson ran in 1964 as a “peace” candidate against Republican right-winger Barry Goldwater and Lt. Gen. Curtis “Bomb’em back to the Stone Age” Lemay. President Johnson won by a landslide in November….and the U.S. phase of the war escalated from 1965 to 1968.

Without censorship to control reporters and news reporting, the U.S. government resorted to the psychological engineering techniques of Madison Avenue and Capitol lobbyists. A central information office was set up in Saigon….known as JUSPAO for the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office. These daily briefings for correspondents soon became known as the “Five O’Clock Follies” because the presented information often was frequently at such odds with what reporters witnessed in the field.

Reporters in Vietnam, even American reporters, were no longer “on-the-team” players. Many saw their role as arbiters of the truth with a loyalty to the troops and the families who worried about them back home. Journalistic ethics were on the side of straight – and often critical – reporting of the U.S. efforts or mess in Vietnam.

American news was still dominated by newspapers and wire services in the Sixties and Seventies. Television nightly news had been only 15 minutes a day until CBS expanded to a half hour in 1963. Television had made radio a dying local medium (which caused radio to seek young listeners of rock n’ roll).

Most larger communities had both morning and evening newspapers….the morning paper catered to conservative issues, WASP, pro-business, Republicans, right-wing leaning issues. The afternoon newspapers were read by the working class factory workers who were interested in union issues, ethnic groups, Catholic and Jewish news, Democrats and liberal issues.

Back to the “Five o’Clock Follies” in Saigon, which were held 12 hours ahead of East Coast time…..so 5 p.m. in Saigon was 5 a.m. in New York City….and the news correspondents from Vietnam were filing their reports critical of the U.S. mission. These reports went into the evening newspapers read by the families of the men being drafted for the war.

This meant the White House and Pentagon had the day to respond and mount a rebuttal in time for the evening television news and the next day’s morning newspapers.

This confusion in reported news….journalists on the scene vrs. generals and politicians in Washington led to what became known as “the Credibility Gap.”

After the Vietnam War, when the U.S. military was at its lowest ebb and confidence in politicians was nearly non-existent, a new sort of revised history myth emerged that “journalists had lost the war” and the “liberal press” had sunk the generals and the American people. The tactic was similar to the stab-in-the-back smear campaign of the Nazis against Jews in the Thirties.

The legacy of Vietnam was that most journalists no longer trusted the military or the government to report on foreign actions. And there was some evidence this was true as the U.S. entered into covert actions in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, and in many places in Africa. Vietnam was such a set-back for the Pentagon that many overseas actions were done by proxy forces and there were cover stories to mask U.S. involvement.

Journalists who attempted to make sense of many of these actions were quickly labeled as commie pinko liberals while at the same time many readers and viewers no longer believed reports showing or quoting government spokespeople…..and there emerged another myth that the news media was fully controlled by government and was only a mouthpiece for propaganda.

During the Eighties there were a few actions, the killing of Marines in Lebanon, the refusal of the U.S. Navy to adapt Israeli Air Force tactics, and the loss of aircraft and Marines caused the U.S. to pull out of Lebanon. Shortly after, the U.S. invaded Grenada and caused another messy standoff with the press. Some journalists were even shot at and others held in custody.

The Department of Defense National Media Pool, a cranky child born of a loveless marriage, died after a long illness during the final quarter of 2001. It was fourteen.

The pool, a child of the Pentagon and the U.S. press, was conceived in the wake of the military's ham-fisted handling of reporters during its 1983 invasion of Grenada. It was an imperfect solution to a vexing problem: How to ensure independent press coverage of the nation's most sensitive military operations.
The pool came to life on July 19, 1987, when a band of ten reporters took off from Andrews Air Force Base for its first real-world deployment. Under strict secrecy, they flew to the Persian Gulf to witness the reflagging of Kuwaiti oil tankers with U.S. flags. They were on hand to document a first-class snafu when a mine blew a hole in the hull of the first tanker the U.S. military had pledged to protect.

The next biggie for the pool was another fiasco, the December 1989 invasion of Panama. Military did not inform the National Media Pool until 3 days after the operation started. Once called, the Pentagon held the media pool at an air base in Panama. Pentagon spoon-fed journalist photographs and information about the operation. Once on scene, the media pool was not allowed true access to information. Information reported to the American public was not accurate about what really happened during the operation.

Seven months later Kuwait was invaded by Iraqi forces and the build up to the Gulf War began. A good account of the news media/government interface is Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War by John R. McArthur. Reporters were angry at their treatment by the military, but there was a whole new twist to international reporting with CNN broadcasting 24-hours a day and having a tremendous appetite for news (or anything to go on the air). Network news and most newspapers were completely sidelined as the world (including Saddam Hussein) watched CNN.

The next decade brought along a new breed of military public affairs officers who had grown up during the hate the press/hate the military era. And a new concept was developed which harkened back to Vietnam days of reporters with field units….but this time the reporters were “embedded” and remained with the same unit – and as in “Band of Brothers” became submerged and bonded with the unit.

CNN is still out there with the big appetite for “news” but so are many international 24-hour news organizations.

But just as public affairs officers sort of “grew up” in the post-Vietnam era, so did the young officers and enlisted men who are serving today in the military. The old World War II notions of veterans in both the news media and the military, have faded away to a new generation.

Doubtful there will ever be the free-wheeling reporting of Vietnam (which is described well in Michael Herr’s classic, Dispatches) but the new reporting with satellite communications and around-the-clock news feeds is still seeking some sense of balance (at a time when newspapers and news magazines are fading away) in the Internet age.