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Chapter 1: What were the initial American perceptions of the Vietnam War?
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This is America in Pursuit, a limited-run series from NPR and ThruLine. I'm Randa Abdelfattah. Each week, we bring you stories about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the U.S. that began 250 years ago. Since these words were first penned, the vision of America has been determined by people testing these ideals against the realities of everyday life.
And in the mid to late 20th century, the Vietnam War put those ideals to the test. The war forced Americans to confront questions about governmental power, the realities of warfare, and what happens to democracy when citizens disagree with their leadership.
This is what the war in Vietnam is all about. American soldiers hiking their way through the sweaty jungles of South Vietnam, searching for an elusive enemy.
And of course, by 1967, 1968 is a staple of the nightly news on television.
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Chapter 2: How did the Gulf of Tonkin incident escalate U.S. involvement in Vietnam?
The war entered the homes of Americans through televisions, newspapers, and radio. Images of what was actually happening in Vietnam changed the way Americans thought of and engaged with the war. And it changed the way the story of war was told.
We might see Vietnamese peasants in obvious anguish, distressed, grieving. But mostly the Vietnamese who featured in American news broadcasts were silent.
Today on the show, the Vietnam War. What happened in Vietnam and how it changed America's relationship with war and the responsibility of journalists on the ground. That's coming up after a quick break.
War in South Vietnam. An ugly war in a far-off place to which the United States is deeply committed. It's 1964. U.S. military advisors have already been in Vietnam for over a decade. By the spring of 1964, the Viet Cong had reached the strength of an estimated 60,000 troops and controlled nearly 68% of South Vietnam's villages and embassies. — Successive U.S.
Chapter 3: What role did media play in shaping public opinion during the Vietnam War?
administrations said they were in Vietnam to prevent communism from spreading throughout Southeast Asia. And things weren't going well. But most Americans weren't paying much attention to the conflict.
— This is a war that begins in a very sort of slow way that initially was largely ignored.
— This is Susan Carruthers, historian at the University of Warwick and author of the book The Media at War.
Jim Crow, political assassinations, voting rights, those domestic issues were much more top of mind. But then... On the night of August 4th, 1964, President Johnson appeared on national television. Renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin... Following a disputed incident in the Gulf of Tonkin involving an exchange of fire between U.S.
and North Vietnamese ships, Congress, with near-unanimous support in the House and Senate, then passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized President Lyndon Johnson to escalate military involvement in Vietnam without a formal declaration of war. And suddenly, the draft was ramped up.
And more and more thousands of American men are sent there.
which led more Americans to ask questions about the war. And news outlets responded. This is what the war in Vietnam is all about.
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Chapter 4: How did journalists report on the realities of warfare in Vietnam?
American soldiers hiking their way through the sweaty jungles of South Vietnam, searching for an elusive enemy.
And of course, by 1967, 1968 is a staple of the nightly news on television.
It first appeared that the Marines had been sniped at and that a few houses were made to pay. Film reels would be flown to Tokyo for quick editing and developing, and then flown to the U.S. There were three main networks broadcasting news from Vietnam, ABC, NBC, and CBS. And the big publications like the New York Times and Time magazine also sent their reporters there.
Blue didn't want to come to Vietnam, and he'd much rather be a businessman than a soldier. But right now, he's in charge of the lives of 21 men. Most of the reporting focused on the U.S. perspective, American soldiers, policy, military strategy.
We might see Vietnamese peasants in obvious anguish, distressed, grieving. But mostly the Vietnamese who featured in American news broadcasts were silent.
A flurry of alternative and international media outlets were also reporting from Vietnam. Many staff correspondents were headquartered in Saigon. The full fury of the war has scarcely touched Saigon.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did journalists face while covering the Vietnam War?
It attracts visitors, GIs on leave, and even American tourists anxious for a feel of the war.
I remember the day after I got there, I was asked to a party. on top of the roof of the best hotel, the Caravelle. There was roses and champagne and all kinds of wonderful things you'd think you were at home, you know. But then, over the edge of the parapet, you could see these flares coming up. And the question was whether it was incoming or outgoing. You would never know until it happened.
This is Frances Fitzgerald. She goes by Frankie. In 1966, Frankie flew to Vietnam sort of on a whim. She was 26, from a wealthy family, and curious about the world. So she decided to take a break from her local reporting job in New York to travel to Southeast Asia, wanting to see the place where her father had deployed during World War II.
She went to Thailand, Laos, and eventually landed in Vietnam.
I thought I would just spend a month there. to an article or to pay my airfare back.
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Chapter 6: How did the Tet Offensive change American perspectives on the war?
But when I got there, I found I couldn't leave. I mean, I'd never seen a war before, of course, and it was all too fascinating.
Unlike in previous conflicts, like World War II, the U.S. military made a conscious decision not to formally censor journalists. They saw Vietnam as more of a limited conflict, not a full-scale war.
Every evening, a girl on spindle heels picks her way over the barrier of rotting fruit and onto the sidewalk.
Frankie arrived with a still film camera and a typewriter she'd packed into her suitcase. And as a freelance journalist, she could pretty much report whatever stories she wanted.
It just occurred to me that the thing that was missing was that the American high command knew nothing about the Vietnamese. Behind her, the alleyway carpeted with mud winds back past the facade of new houses into a maze of thatched huts and tin roof shacks called Bui Phat, one of the oldest of the refugee quarters.
She got articles printed in The Village Voice, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books and The New York Times Magazine centering the Vietnamese perspective. So walk me through, like, how did you actually go about getting that perspective? Because I'm assuming you didn't speak Vietnamese.
Well, I found several interpreters along the way. That wasn't hard to do because people wanted to do that.
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Chapter 7: What impact did Frankie's reporting have on the anti-war movement?
You make a lot of money that way.
And how would you know if someone was a good interpreter if you don't speak Vietnamese? I could feel it. Frankie would travel around the South Vietnamese countryside with her interpreter, hoping to connect with people. But she wasn't always welcomed with open arms.
Americans do not normally walk through the slums. Not the real slums, like those in the outlying areas.
She remembers going into a community where refugees were living in makeshift homes built on planks atop a marsh.
They were angry at being displaced from their villages and put in this marsh. Gigantic sewers, lakes full of stagnant filth. And suddenly, a pebble sails out and falls gently on the stranger's back. It is followed by a hail of stones.
She began getting pelted with stones.
I was sort of offended by it in the sense that I thought, what have I done?
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Chapter 8: How did the Vietnam War influence the future of war reporting?
But I could very well understand if I had to live in such a place. I perhaps would be throwing stones too. These refugees lose their lands, their families, their ancestral homes, and the structure of their lives.
Frankie says the key to finally connecting with people was just continuing to show up.
They would realize that you are not going to come and blow up the village.
How did you approach fact-checking? Either things that the local Vietnamese people were telling you or the things that the U.S. military or the Vietnamese local police were telling you?
Well, sometimes it was absolutely impossible. You just have to do the best you could. Find other sources that said the same thing. I think we're given certain leeway by our editors. There was a rule that you couldn't prove anything in a story by quoting a Vietnamese.
Wow. So it was pretty explicit that if your source was a Vietnamese person versus an American commander, let's say, the two statements are not equal.
Not equal. Not equal.
And there were times when she felt the reality she was witnessing would be too unbelievable to her readers.
I went to see the civilian hospital and Then, you know, we see all these Vietnamese on beds outside their rooms with terrible burns, which they had from napalm. You know, to describe it right here is almost impossible for me. It was so awful. I didn't know what to do. I reported some of it, but just not the really gruesome details. Why did you leave the most gruesome details out, do you think?
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