Writing in Red: Unmasking American Media’s Narrative about the Communist Threat
The Vietnam War as "the first television war"
Historically, governments have used the press and media as a tool to shape the public's perspective on the goods and evils of wartime. By either putting forth certain propoganda and nationalist sentiments, or by censoring information and coverage that is deemed as unnecessarily violent or negaitve, media and journalists have been vital in shaping perceptions and tones of war. The Vietnam War throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s is no exception. In fact, it was the reportage of American war correspondents such as Jacques Leslie and Frances Fitzgerald that wrote home about some of the powerful and illuminating anecdotes responsible for the large counterculture and anti-war political shifts in the U.S. at the time. It was their journalism that, in a way distinct from past wars, not only revealed the harsh realities of war but also the multidimensional and humane side of the communist enemy.
The changing American media perspective of the "Viet Cong"
However, at the start of the war, journalistic publications and TV broadcasts around the globe did not portray the victimization and humanitization of the "Viet Cong". Instead, one early New York Times headline in 1955 even warned its readers to keep watch of the spread of communism, specifically since communists had just taken over North Vietnam from the French.
"As for the American news media, much of what they published on the subject reflected their nation's preoccupation with Communism and the cold war." - William Hammond
Additionally, at this early point in the war, before U.S. involvement, media's role followed the pattern of censorship from previous wars. In fact, in the early 1960s, the South Vietnamese government worked hard to suppress information and reportage that could be harmful to the appearance of their success. In 1962, for example, President Diem led a directive known as Cable 1006 which attampted to contol the press in Vietnam, specifically regarding a failed coup against South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem, in which four hundred civilians died. The South Vietnamese government took it a step further by requiring the U.S. spokesperson to inform the American press to withold stories related to events occuring in Vietnam. A New York times article, responded to this censorship with the headline "Americans Under Orders to Withold News" (Hammond). This blatant censorship only further feuled American's distrust of Vietnamese and the growing impatience of American reporters to be able to publish their real and timely stories.
These anti-"Viet Cong" sentiments did not just exclusively circle within American media, but also reached Americans and westerners living in South Vietnam. "On September 2, 1965, the Saigon Daily News, a newspaper published entirely for the English-speaking Western community of Vietnam, showed on its front page a large photograph of American servicemen standing with drawn weapons over a heap of what the caption describes as 'dead VC' - all lying face down on the ground, and with their hands tied behind their backs" (Reporting Vietnam). These articles and photographs published reflect how media, earlier on in the war, strived to paint the "Viet Cong" as weak and worthless casualities of war. Similarly, even America's president in 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson, expressed anti- "Viet Cong" sentiments when he said "you build schools and the hospitals and the Communists tear them down. That is just one more reason I get so frustrated when people charge that we should be more sympathetic to the Vietcong" (Reporting Vietnam).
It wasn't until later into the 1960s, when conversations began about the extent and morality behind the war's violence that journalistic coverage of specific events led to the rapid decrease in support for the war. One example includes the Tet Offensive of 1968 when North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops surprise attacked South Vietnamese and American forces. After this event, "Doom and gloom" plagued American media. This event, and media coverage of this event, reminded the American public of the thousands of civilians who needlessly died as a result of this war and the fact "the offensive had 'demolished the myth' that allied stength controlled South Vietnam" (Hammond). Additionally, these reportings opened the door for conversations that questioned and challenged the othering and demonizing of the communists.
Antoher example is of the famous photograph Eddie Adams took of Major General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. Adams is an American photographer and photojournalist who was sent to Vietnam to cover the war for the Associated Press. There, he captured Major General Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a Viet Cong soldier in the head, knowing reporters were filming and watching. This event only further escalated both American's feelings of distrust towards American and South Vietnamese war figures, as well as the resentment towards the ongoing violence. Similarly, the press coverage of the My Lai Massacre which resulted from the unnecessary violence commited by American troops during the Tet Offensive, propelled a real shift in the public's opinion who begn viewing communist soldiers not just simply as the enemy but also as victims of American violence. After American soldiers orchestrated hundreds of unprovoked killings of South Vietnamese civilians in a hamlet called My Lai, it was soon believed that:
"The carefuly cultivated image of the good American soldier who sheltered orphans and distributed candy to children [fell] into doubt" - William Hammond
The Political Villagers of South Vietnam
And indeed in this post-Tet Offensive world, broadcasts and publications depicting the harsher side of war not previously depicted in journalism, became more and more common. They were influential in not just showing new realities of war to the American public, but also in providing journalists and war correspondents a new atmosphere, a new platform platform, to publish pieces that really looked at who the people within the enemy border were.
Frances Fitzgerald was one such journalist who used this platform to do on ground foreign journalism in order to address many of the American misconceptions around the communist enemy, and the people living in South Vietnam. Fitizgerald, an American journalist sent to cover the Vietnam War in 1966, quickly arrived and recognized the destruction occuring as a result of misunderstanding. In her 1974 article, "The Cadres and the Villagers" Fitzgerald writes about her visit, just as Jacques Leslie had done, to National Liberation Front (NLF) territory (Chuong Thien Province in the Mekong Delta) a month after the Paris Peace Accords were signed. In her article, Fitzgerald asks her readers to think about both sides of the war, "The question was, of course, whether the lines of military control corresponded to the political sympathies of the people" (Fitzgerald).
Throughout her writings she published in the early and mid 1970s, Fitzgerald tries to get her readers to re-examine certain truths and pre-conceptions they might have about the war and the people involved. Fitzgerald believes that those who spent a ton of time in Vietnam would "claim not that the majority of the country people felt any love or loyalty to the Saigon government but only that those living in GVN-held villages at least preferred the governement to the NLF" (Fitzgerald). In her writing, she highlighted the muted opinions and anecdotes of corruption that she witnessed below the surface. She discusses the South Vietnamese government's goal of pacification and how a known successful example of that, the Duc Lap village, comes at the cost of corruption. Duc Lap was in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and was turned into a military base for the South Vietnamese forces. There, Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops "pacified" locals in an attempt to gain support of rural populations for the South Vietnamese government. In Duc Lap, GVN forces were able to constantly beat, arrest, and bribe the villagers to support anti-communist propoganda at village meetings under the protection of the "Phoenix Program" (which was designed to target and take out Viet Cong and communist sympathizers).
Fitzgerald's article heavily focuses on the opinons and experiences lived by South Vietnamese villagers, both communist-sympathizing and not. She tried to highlight the "Apolitical politics" in the villages of South Vietnam. She sat with villagers living in GVN territory and heard "not only that they sympathized with the other side but that they were carrying on an active psychological warfare campaign against the GVN officials and soldiers" (Fitzgerald). Her efforts and her reportings were not attempting to give large sweeping generalizations, but rather to show the thoughts and feelings of the people themselves. Fitzgerald notes,
"For some twenty years, most Americans have believed the Vietnamese farmers to be apolitical, uncommitted, desirous only of being left in peace and secruity to till their fields" - Frances Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald even concludes that the Vietnamese villagers were much more political that Americans and that despite what the American and South Vietnamese governemnts would suggest, the people of Vietnam were not specifically sick of the communists, but rather much more sick of the war as a whole.
Similar to Fitzgerald, Jacques Leslie also visited Viet Cong territory and published pieces that tried to depict those living in NLF territory as more than just communist and as more than just the enemy. In fact, he became the first American journalists to enter NLF territory after the 1973 ceasefire agreement. In one of his publications following his visit, "In Viet Cong Country, Villagers are the Key", Leslie also writes about the political nature of the villagers. He specifically focuses on how the village he visited was highly concerned with Article 11 of the Paris Peace Accords "that says that both sides 'will ensure the democratic liberties of the people,' including freedom of speech, press, organization, political activities, belief and movement" (Leslie). Leslie describes how Le Hoang Oanh, the NLF representative in the Binh Phu village, used Article 11 of the ceasefire as a politically complex and clever strategy to "defend its right to fly liberation flags and organize politically" (Leslie).
Just as Frances Fitzgerald, strived to accomplish with her articles on the South Vietnamese villagers, Jacques Leslie used his expereinces visiting Viet Cong territory to write about the enemy and attempt to show American readers a more humane, complex, and political side to the communist forces and their sympathizers. In our interview, Jacques Leslie even noted that his experience in Viet Cong territory led him to:
"[Admire] their courage, their capacity to put up resistance against the monumental bombing that they endured without a tiny fraction of the weapons the Americans used. And that's a symbol of resistance" - Jacques Leslie