Media+in+the+Vietnam+War

=Media in the Vietnam War=



====Vietnam was the first war to be televised. The television brought the war into the living rooms of every American citizen. This war changed the way of reporting for future journalists. They tossed out the old way of using press releases and keeping everything happy and exciting and brought in the new investigative journalism of writing cold truths. The brutal honesty in the media essentially led to the end of the Vietnam War.==== = =

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====At the beginning of the war many people did not know the truth about what was going on in Vietnam. All the media was used for before this war was to keep their audience calm and happy. But during Vietnam reporters started to question the reason for Americas presence there. Casualties kept adding up and the skepticism of the American people increased. The reporters started to document the horrible things in the war and all of the politics involved. The public started to doubt the government’s involvement even more and they started to lose hope. A report came out in the New York Times that released the actually number of casualties witch was much higher than the number the government released. The media put pictures and videos onto news channels of the devastating front lines. This was the last straw for the American citizens. This was the first time any real footage was shown to the public. It was now the most important source of information for Americans. ====

**The Pentagon Papers**
====The public started to question the American government even more when the New York Times and The Washington Post published The Pentagon Papers. It was a top secret study of the Americans in Vietnam. The documents had been leaked to the press and had outlined all the missteps in the Vietnam policies. The actual information in the paper was debated but it highlighted all the flaws in the decisions the government has made. This generated even more criticism from the U.S citizens.====

**The End**
Soldiers returning back from Vietnam had no idea what they were in for. Being isolated from most, if not all information being given to the public, they did not know what was going on back home. The large anti war protests and general disgust towards the war made the soldiers coming home feel ashamed. The men coming home had just gone through hell and they come back to America to be spit on, called names and being treated like traitors. Most of the soldiers felt pride and confidence when returning to the States from serving their country. That feeling vanished very quickly.

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