Another Look at Vietnam “Fake News”
On February 15, 2018, the Wall Street Journal printed excellent letters to the editor that debated fake news and the Tet offensive of ’68, which took place 50 years ago. The letters were written in response to William Luti’s Op Ed on the 30th of January, featured in my last blog. In case you missed his comments, I’ll highlight a few cogent remarks and add a few of my own. Vietnam still sparks contentious debate obviously. There were too many letters to summarize in a single blog, so I picked one that struck home.
As Richard Nixon noted, “No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and misremembered now.”
A close friend reminded me of that poignant quote that accurately describes juxtaposed perceptions of Vietnam and why we still argue about it. The subject still evokes emotional responses from many.
Uwe Siemon-Netto put Luti’s accusation of “fake news” in the best perspective I’ve read. A frontline reporter for West Germany newspapers, he observed the ’68 Tet offensive in Hue during the intense combat. He separated the war’s accredited news reporters into three categories :
- 70 % who rarely left Saigon and relied on secondhand reports.
- The other 30% who were combat reporters in the field, like Netto and Peter Braestrup, the latter quoted in my last blog. They witnessed the intense battles and NVA atrocities firsthand in Hue and reported the facts, not fake news.. They wrote that the VC and NVA lost the Tet offensive militarily. But, did that news filter back to the States? Or, did Saigon reporters spin it?
- But, in the final analysis, the actual combat reports were overshadowed by the third category of reporters- media stars flown in from NYC and DC for cameo appearances, photo ops, and to make ideologically motivated pronouncements on camera. Netto accuses them of journalistic malpractice. Many of our troops considered them grandstanders, or worse..
(As an aside, the US troops often referred to the Saigon denizen reporters with derision as REMFs. They respected the combat reporters taking the risks, by and large…)
Netto and Braestrup, the two frontline reporters, witnessed the defeat of the Tet attackers over the long fought battles in ’68. One day they were standing by a mass grave of old men, women and children in Hue when a group of the category three reporters wandered by. Braestrup asked them, “Why don’t you film this scene? ”
“We are not here to spread anticommunist propaganda,” one answered.
That’s a capsule summary of why the subject of the Vietnam War is so devisive.
In my recently published historical narrative, RECALL, I recount numerous other stories of this contentious era.
Want to learn more or to purchase RECALL? Visit my website, www.RLawsonAuthor.com and read more blogs on Vietnam.
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