Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Shadows of Vietnam: reforming military–media relations in the USA and Australia

2012; Routledge; Volume: 36; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14443058.2012.727451

1835-6419

Kevin Foster,

Island Studies and Pacific Affairs

Abstract This paper contrasts Australian and US military responses to the media coverage of the war in Vietnam. It examines the “oppositional media thesis”, considers how this shaped subsequent US military-media relations, and examines the experiences leading to the review and reform of the military's official position in relation to the media. The paper then compares the US experience with that of the Australian military, examining the factors shaping Australian media coverage of the war in Vietnam, the mutual hostility this bred, why it has survived, and how it has shaped military-media relations in the war in Afghanistan. Keywords: Vietnam Warmilitary–media relationsAfghanistan War Notes 1. Quoted in Fay Anderson and Richard Trembath, Witnesses to War: the History of Australian Conflict Reporting (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2011), 230. 2. At the height of the Tet offensive, there were 637 correspondents accredited by the Military Assistance Command Vietnam, a substantial proportion of who reported for American broadcasters and publications. The US-based wire services United Press International (UPI) and Associated Press (AP), and the New York Times, retained a presence in Vietnam from the outset of the fighting until its cessation. By contrast, for the Australian press: “Although some papers sent correspondents for lengthy periods, none ever had a permanent Vietnam correspondent”. Rodney Tiffen, “News Coverage of Vietnam,” in Australia's Vietnam: Australia in the Second Indo-China War, ed. Peter King (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1983), 166. 3. For example, where in the US the Tet offensive coincided with and stimulated increased criticism of military conduct and political direction in Vietnam, Tiffen notes that it “prompted little questioning among Australian editorialists”. Tiffen, “News Coverage,” 177. 4. Quoted, Tiffen, “News Coverage of Vietnam,” 185. Robert Elegant claimed: “South Vietnamese and American forces actually won the limited military struggle. They virtually crushed the Viet Cong in the South, the ‘native’ guerrillas who were directed, reinforced, and equipped from Hanoi; and thereafter they threw back the invasion by regular North Vietnamese divisions. None the less, the War was finally lost to the invaders after the US disengagement because the political pressures built up by the media had made it quite impossible for Washington to maintain even the minimal material and moral support that would have enabled the Saigon regime to continue effective resistance”. Robert Elegant, “How to Lose a War,” Encounter 57.2 (1981): 73. 5. Jeffrey P. Kimball, “The Stab-in-the-Back Legend and the Vietnam War,” Armed Forces and Society 14.3 (Spring 1988): 438. 6. Susan Carruthers, The Media at War, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 100. Kimball notes that “A nearly pure form of the theory is represented in the writings and statements of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, William Westmoreland, U.S. Grant Sharp, the John Birch society, writers for National Review and Accuracy in Media”. Kimball, “Stab-in-the-Back,” 438. 7. Elegant, “How to Lose,” 73. In the same article, he famously asserted that the press “was instinctively ‘agin the Government’—and at least reflexively, for Saigon's enemies”. Elegant, “How to Lose,” 73. 8. Daniel Hallin, The “Uncensored War”: the Media and Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 105–6. 9. Hallin, Uncensored War, x. 10. Michael Mandelbaum, “Vietnam: The Television War,” Daedalus 111.4 (Fall 1982): 159. 11. William Hammond, “The Press in Vietnam as Agent of Defeat: A Critical Examination,” Reviews in American History 17.2 (June 1989): 315. 12. For a more detailed discussion of television's tendency to reinforce existing opinions, see Hallin, Uncensored War, 106–8. 13. Quoted in Thomas Rid, War and Media Operations: the US Military and the Press from Vietnam to Iraq (New York: Routledge, 2007), 56. 14. Hammond, “Press in Vietnam,” 315. 15. Hammond, “Press in Vietnam,” 316. 16. Hallin, Uncensored War, 129. 17. Hammond, “Press in Vietnam,” 315. 18. Rid, War and Media Operations, 61. 19. Rid, War and Media Operations, 61. 20. Henry Gole, “Don't Kill the Messenger: Vietnam War Reporting in Context,” Parameters (Winter 1996–97), 151. 21. John M. Shotwell, “The Fourth Estate as a Force Multiplier,” Marine Corps Gazette (July 1991), 72. 22. Bernard Trainor, “The Military and the Media: a Troubled Embrace,” Parameters (December 1990), 2. 23. Rid, War and Media Operations, 62–63. 24. The first conflict in which the lessons of Vietnam were used to shape an alternative media policy was the Falklands War of 1982. For more on this, see inter alia: Valerie Adams, The Media and the Falklands War (London: Macmillan, 1986); Kevin Foster, Fighting Fictions: War, Narrative and National Identity (London: Pluto Press, 1999). 25. For more on this, see Peter Young and Peter Jesser, The Media and the Military: From the Crimea to Desert Strike (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1997), 129–31. 26. Young and Jesser, Media and Military, 132. 27. See Young and Jesser, Media and Military, 132–4. 28. See Young and Jesser, Media and Military, 133. 29. For an analysis of the MRT experience, see Carruthers, Media at War, 132–5. 30. For an analysis of Iraqi propaganda triumphs in the first Gulf War, in particular the bombing of the “Baby Milk Plant” and the destruction of the Al Firdos (or Al Amiriya) bunker on February 13, 1991, see Rid, War and Media Operations, 84–86; and Carruthers, Media at War, 138–9. 31. R. L. Olson, Gulf War Air Power Survey, Volume Three: Logistics; Support (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1993), 135. 32. Rid, War and Media Operations, 86. 33. Shotwell, “The Fourth Estate,” 72. 34. Rid, War and Media Operations, 87. For a discussion of Saddam Hussein's thraldom to the Vietnam Myth, his conviction that US public support for Operation Desert Storm would crumble at the sight of casualties from Iraq, as it had in Vietnam, see Carruthers, Media at War, 131–2. 35. Rid, War and Media Operations, 98. 36. Quoted Rid, War and Media Operations, 98. 37. Of the 23,000 bombs dropped by NATO during Operation Allied Force, only 30, or 0.0013 percent failed to hit the intended target. It is a mark of the deftness of the Yugoslav information campaign that it was able to make such effective propaganda capital out of such a minuscule sample. 38. NATO had been led to believe that the building housed the Yugoslav Federal Protectorate for Supply and Procurement. 39. Dr Jamie P. Shea, “The Kosovo Crisis and the Media: Reflections of a NATO Spokesman,” in Lessons from Kosovo: the KFOR Experience, ed. Larry Wentz (Washington, DC: Department of Defense Command and Control Research Program, 2002), 162. 40. Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 444. 41. Rid, War and Media Operations, 87. 42. Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Public Affairs Guidance (PAG) on Embedding Media During Possible Future Operations/Deployments in the U.S. Central Commands (CENTCOM) Area of Responsibility (AOR) (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2003), 3, Section G. 43. Defense, PAGs, 2, Section A. 44. Defense, PAGs, 4. 45. Brian Humphreys, “The Australian Defence Force's Media Strategy: What it is and Why, and Why it Needs to Change,” in What are we Doing in Afghanistan? the Military and the Media at War, ed. Kevin Foster (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009), 31–2. 46. Humphreys, “The Australian Defence Force's Media Strategy,” 31. 47. Captain Chris Linden, Defence MediaOps, email correspondence with author, November 22, 2010, 1. Linden goes on to note that: “The ADF embed program offers access to the MTF [Mentoring Task Force] for two representatives from a single media agency for up to 21 days. Each MTF rotation will host a minimum of two embed cycles.” Linden, email correspondence, 1. This compares very unfavourably with the embedding programs run by the Dutch and Canadian militaries, which embed, respectively, twenty and forty times as many media per unit rotation as the ADF. 48. Politicians and the media have persistently sought to establish direct links between the performance of the troops in Afghanistan and that of their Anzac forebears, particularly in the context of casualties: “The Prime Minister led the nation's mourning … ‘Our troops in Afghanistan are engaged in dangerous work … And they perform their role with distinction and with dedication, with bravery and with professionalism. They perform their work in the best traditions of ANZAC. There is no higher call for any person than to wear the uniform of Australia and today we are tragically reminded of the terrible risks that come with that calling.’” Michael Harvey, “Road Bomb Kills Aussies,” Herald Sun, November 28, 2008, 9. 49. Ian McPhedran, “Defence Coy on Embedding Media,” Australian, September 14, 2009, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/defence-coy-on-embedding-media/story-e6frg996-1225772465856. In fairness to the ADF, it is important to note that the embedding program has been rapidly expanded in 2012, with an almost constant media presence in Afghanistan and with a regular rotation of media personnel. 50. Tiffen, “News Coverage,” 166. 51. Anderson and Trembath, Witnesses to War, 231. John Brittle tried, without success, to persuade the Adelaide Advertiser to send him to Vietnam in 1968 “but they did not think it was worthwhile”. Anderson and Trembath, Witnesses to War, 231. 52. Tiffen, “News Coverage,” 166. 53. Anderson and Trembath, Witnesses to War, 233. 54. Anderson and Trembath, Witnesses to War, 234. 55. Anderson and Trembath, Witnesses to War, 234. 56. Trish Payne, War and Words: the Australian Press and the Vietnam War (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999), 4. 57. Payne, War and Words, 8. The dead Australian journalists were Michael Birch, Bruce Cantwell, and John Piggott; Frank Palmos survived. 58. Tim Bowden, One Crowded Hour: Neil Davis Combat Cameraman, 1934–1985 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1987), 141. For a further explanation of the origins of this description of the Australian “policy”, see Anderson and Trembath, Witnesses to War, 238. 59. Anderson and Trembath, Witnesses to War, 237. 60. Anderson and Trembath, Witnesses to War, 237. 61. Fay Anderson, “The New and Altered Conventions of Reporting War: Censorship, Access and Representation in Afghanistan,” in What are we Doing in Afghanistan? The Military and the Media at War, ed. Kevin Foster (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009), 127. 62. Quoted in Payne, War and Words, 5. 63. Tiffen, “News Coverage,” 187. 64. Tiffen, “News Coverage,” 184. 65. Mark Thomson, Serving Australia: Control and Administration of the Department of Defence (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2011), 5. 66. Thomson, Serving Australia, 1. 67. Thomson, Serving Australia, 2. 68. Thomson, Serving Australia, 2. 69. Thomson, Serving Australia, 2, 11, 19. 70. Dan Oakes, “Defence in ‘Beyond Tolerable State’ Says Analyst,” Age, June 27, 2011, http://www.theage.com.au/national/defence-in-beyond-tolerable-state-says-analyst-20110626-1glsj.html. The coming and going of five defence ministers since 2006 eloquently attests to the insurmountable challenges that the position brings. 71. Cynthia Banham and Deborah Snow, “They Don't Follow Orders: Nelson Opens Fire on Top Brass,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 26, 2009, 1. 72. Rid, War and Media Operations, 15. 73. Senator John Faulkner, “2010 C. E. W. Bean Foundation Dinner Address,” accessed July 6, 2011, http://www.senatorjohnfaulkner.com.au/file.php?file=/news/KSBKDMDOTF/index.html. 74. Michael Herr, Dispatches (London: Picador, 1977), 195. 75. Anderson and Trembath, Witnesses to War, 236.