Page 223 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

Vietnam
By the 1960s newsgathering technologies had advanced to the
point that relatively ‘live’ coverage of military conflict was possible.
There was still likely to be a gap of a day or two between scenes
being shot and the film flown back to the news organisation’s
headquarters, but by comparison with the Second World War
and before, military events could be reported more or less as they
happened. The availability of such technology meant that the
conflict in Vietnam between communist and anti-communist forces,
the 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 disinfor-
mation. 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 involve-
ment 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

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