How Television and Photographs Changed American Public Opinon after the TET Offensive

M.J. Arlen coined the phrase ‘Living Room War’ to describe Americans’ reliance on television as their main source of news of the Vietnam War. Historian Rodger Streitmatter states television and film have a huge impact on public opinion. Print media can describe combat, but film and photographs can show the true horrors of war. Images of war on television and in newspapers were very damaging to Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration’s public support to wage war. The sources used for this research include photographs taken by American journalists, newspaper articles from the New York Times and The Times, journal articles such as “Rethinking American Press Coverage of the Vietnam War, 1965-1968” by Andrew Huebner and books, like The “Uncensored” War by Daniel Hallin, Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War by William Hammond, A Vietnam Reader: Sources and Essays by George Donelson Moss, A Century of Media, A Century of War by Robin Andersen, Media and the Politics of Failure: Great Powers, Communication Strategies, and Military Defeats by Laura Roselle and Mightier than the Sword: How the News Media Have Shaped American History by Rodger Streitmatter. The media’s use of television and photographs during the Vietnam War provided a powerful indictment of LBJ’s administration’s reports of success in Vietnam. Television news reports became more critical of government policies and increased the exposure of graphic photographs of wounded American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians to the American public and changed public opinion to disapproval of the Vietnam War