War, Media, and Memory: American Television News Coverage of the Vietnam War

Social and political impacts of television news coverage of the Vietnam War are often glorified and grossly overestimated. This paper argues that the role of the American media during the war did not directly affect public support for the war, nor did it profoundly impact American nationalism and military policy. Television news coverage did, however, influence how events were perceived and remembered. The commonly held belief that the American news media was directly responsible for the decline of public confidence in the U.S. government, ultimately contributing to the public’s distaste for any further involvement in Vietnam, is a narrow viewpoint that does not reflect the complex reality of the situation. What we remember and how we remember keeps changing, thus revealing the power the media has in shaping how we observe and recall events during periods of armed conflict