Page 208 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 187

POLITICAL COMMUNICATION IN A GLOBALISED WORLD
latter supported by the US, became the first ‘open’ war. So open was it
perceived to be, indeed, that the victory of the North Vietnamese, and the
corresponding humiliation of the US armed forces, was and continues to be
blamed by many Americans on the media which reported it.
If the conflict in Vietnam became what Mercer et al. call ‘the first
television war’ (1987, p. 221), it began in secrecy and disinformation. During
the Kennedy administration troops were sent to South-East Asia without the
knowledge of Congress or the American people, and their numbers were
increased incrementally in order to avoid political controversy. When larger
scale involvement was required, the Johnson administration manufactured
the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a ‘threat’ to US forces became the
pretext for stepping up US military activity. The threat never existed, but the
objective of winning domestic and international consent for a heightened US
role in the conflict was achieved.
Disinformation is, of course, a form of military public relations which has
been pursued in many conflicts since the Vietnam War. In 1984 the Reagan
administration used the (illusory) threat of Soviet MiG fighter jets being
exported to Nicaragua to prepare US public opinion for an escalation of
military aggression against the Sandinista government (the escalation never
came, but the US media and those of other countries reported the MiG story
as if it was true) (McNair, 1988). The bombing of Tripoli in 1986 was
justified by alleged Libyan involvement in a terrorist bomb attack on US
servicemen in Berlin, even though the US government was aware that the
most likely culprits were in fact the Syrians.
In so far as the escalation of the Vietnam War began with the Gulf of
Tonkin incident the Johnson administration may be seen as pioneers in the
use of this type of political communication. It was, indeed, an enthusiastic
exponent of the whole range of military PR techniques in its efforts to
convince public opinion at home and abroad of the legitimacy of US policy
on Vietnam. The Americans were hampered, however, by the fact that their
ally in Vietnam, the South Vietnamese government, was hostile to the media.
As Mercer et al. put it:

they did not see the need to provide the international news media
with necessary working facilities and were uneasy with the tradition
of granting journalists access to troops and top civil and military
officials. The South Vietnamese armed forces had no concept of
public relations. Their official military spokespersons were usually
difficult to find, and military communiques appeared well after the
event.
(1987, p. 221)

The South Vietnamese authorities were not, unlike the Americans,
operating within the context of liberal democracy, and therefore had no need

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