THE "UNCENSORED WAR"
The Media and Vietnam
Daniel C. Hallin
Oxford University Press, 1986
285 pp., $22.50
Seldom does a doctoral dissertation lend itself so aptly to publication in book form. This one is a rare exception to that general rule. It was completed ten years after the Vietnam War ended, and it captures, essentially and vividly, the manner in which the media treated the war and, to a substantial extent, the media's effect - or lack of effect - on public opinion and on the conduct of the war.
Don't misunderstand. This is not a history of the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia nor is it an analysis of the military conduct of the war in Vietnam, though a good deal of both elements emerge in the text. It is, rather, an analysis of media coverage, and while it reflects exhaustive, detailed, and painstaking research, it has some limitations. As Hallin himself points out, it is impossible for any single study to deal comprehensively with the media coverage of Vietnam. The problem is not simply one of volume; quite understandably the sheer volume of material from the nation's press is so immense as to be virtually unmanageable. More to the point, however, is the great diversity of reporting and opinionizing. Coverage of the war in the so-called liberal, prestige papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post, for example, was significantly different from coverage in the so-called conservative papers like the Chicago Tribune and the San Diego Union. Thus, anyone following events as reported in The New York Times and Newsweek were treated to much more critical views than those who followed events in the New York Daily News or Reader's Digest. Consequently, Hallin's study is based mainly on coverage in The New York Times with a "look occasionally at other papers," constrained, as he was, by the need to keep his raw material within manageable proportions.
Television, of course, represents a separate sector of the media and, as such, requires separate treatment. It has become a cliché, but it is nevertheless true, that Vietnam was indeed the first "televised war" brought daily into the living rooms of America, with profound though immeasurable effect on public opinion. Unfortunately, no organized attempts to preserve the network broadcast was made until mid-1965. Accordingly Hallin divides his study into two parts, the first analyzing The New York Times coverage from 1961 through mid-1965, and the second analyzing the network evening news coverage from August 1965 through the cease-fire in January 1973. It would have been interesting, not to say fascinating, if he had been able to compare the newspaper coverage with the television coverage for the same time frame, but you can't have everything. Despite the obvious limitations, he has produced a valuable study with remarkable astute insights and observations. It is a worthy contribution to the growing body of literature on Vietnam and will add significantly to the national dialogue and debate on this traumatic episode in our national experience.
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The Gulf of Tonkin incident represented to Hallin a classic case of "Cold War news management." Through its public statements, its management of information, and its actions, the
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