by Michael Lane

Created on: November 26, 2007

There has been no shortage of comparisons between America's war with Vietnam and its current war with Iraq. But while similarities exist in the political arena, the differences in media coverage of the wars are many. Journalists during the Vietnam era offered honest, unflattering accounts of US diplomatic and military activity when it occurred, with support from their employers. Today's media owners, who are generally much chummier with the corporate and conservative powers-that-be than their predecessors, are far less likely to allow for the sort of brutal criticism of the 1960's and 70's.

One of the standard-bearers of critical Vietnam reportage was David Halberstam, a New York Times correspondent who traveled with American troops beginning in 1962. Initially believing that an American military presence was the right move, Halberstam's assignment in the strife-ridden Asian country informed his ultimate opinion that the war was a mistake. In 1965, he published a book entitled The Making of a Quagmire that related his experiences as a journalist in Vietnam. One harrowing account from the book found the author accompanying an armed helicopter unit. The day ended after a good many Vietcong were taken prisoner, and some were killed. Halberstam wrote, "Every man taken today, [Mert Perry of Time] said, probably had a brother or a son or a brother-in-law who would take his place after todayWe knew that he was rightIt was an endless, relentless war to which ordinary military rules did not apply" (Halberstam 293). It is easy to imagine that kind of pessimism being quashed, labeled bad for troop morale, and scuttled by the corporate media owners of modern America, who seek to curry favor with fiscally conservative politicos.
Seymour Hersch wrote about a particularly infamous episode from the Vietnam War for the Dispatch News Service in 1969. The US military had tried to suppress the details of a battle in which 128 North Vietnamese were killed, because most of those who lost their lives were civilians. The journalist's investigation revealed that the U. S. Army had charged Lt. William L. Calley, Jr. with premeditated murder. Hersch wrote that the episode was "by far the worst known U.S. atrocity case of the Vietnam War" (Hersch 294). By doing so, he engendered a riot of self-questioning among American citizens about U.S. involvement in the conflict (and such a reaction should arguably be the goal of American journalists). Compared to the coverage given to America's

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