This was altogether typical of reporting in the United States during World War II, though it does not mean that reporters were uncritical propagandists or rubber-stamp robots for the military’s point of view. Even under conditions of strict censorship, they challenged decisions to cut or embargo their copy and won a fair number of these arguments. For the most part, the officers assigned to work with the press took on their duties with open minds. If reporters were able to convince the officers that the deleted or delayed material would in no way jeopardize security or other classified considerations, then there was a good chance that a decision to censor would be reversed.

The best of the World War II correspondents also prided themselves on their accuracy. In their coverage of the D-Day invasion, for example, they did not flinch from reporting on all the bloodshed. Thanks to their eyewitness accounts from Normandy, civilians back home soon became aware of the terrible price in casualties the Allies were paying to secure those beachheads. Later, during the Allies’ triumphant push across Europe, American reporters did not gloss over the occasional setbacks, most notably at the time of the Battle of the Bulge, when the US and British commands were caught napping. Even though I have chosen to focus on the European theater, comparable examples could easily be drawn from the war against Japan in the Pacific.

At the heart of the harmonious bond between the military and the press during World War II was a clear sense of mutual trust and shared objectives. The military brass generally recognized that the primary concern of most US correspondents was the welfare of the American troops and a complete victory that would bring an unconditional end to tyranny in Europe and Asia. In return, the journalists trusted the officers to understand that, within the necessary limits of security, the flow of honest reporting was a freedom to respect—indeed, it was a freedom they were fighting to defend in the war.

From Truth to Cynicism

These were the experiences of the generation of reporters who were mentors to the war correspondents of Vietnam. It can be dangerous to apply the lessons from past battles to the future. It can even be dangerous to apply the lessons of past wars about propaganda and press relations. Such was the professional baggage my colleagues and I took into Southeast Asia. We began coverage of the war prepared for an atmosphere of mutual trust.

In war, so goes the cliché, truth is the first casualty. In Vietnam, trust also took a big hit, almost from the start. From that loss came many problems, so many that one hardly knows where to start listing them, much less to offer a thoughtful analysis.

The way the United States fought the Vietnam War and the way journalists covered it were light years apart from their counterparts in World War II. Vietnam was the first television war and the first uncensored war. It was longer than World War II, and the United States never fully mobilized to fight it. Total victory was never a goal, a definition of “winning” never clear. Regular journalists were not in uniform, and the press corps was truly international and impartial. Complexities and difficulties abounded in ways no one in the military or in journalism could have imagined during the combat of the 1940s. Professional objectivity was the paramount goal of the overwhelming majority of American reporters and many others who covered the war.

From the point of view of at least one journalist—this one—a core problem began with the belief held by some US political, diplomatic, and military leaders that they could effectively mislead journalists and, through them, the public about the reality of the war: the political mess in South Vietnam and an extremely difficult, uphill combat situation. Neither the very top political leaders nor their diplomatic and military chiefs in the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations believed they could afford to level with the public.

When journalists went to Vietnam, they found a political, diplomatic, and military quagmire, and when they reported it, efforts were made to discredit them both professionally and personally. This led to an escalation of mistrust between experienced journalists and the country’s leadership. Had the history of World War II not colored each side’s expectations of the other’s behavior going in, the sense of betrayal may not have been nearly so powerful.

Mark well, there was a baseline level of mutual trust—just not between the press and the top ranks. Relations between most journalists and military people of field-grade rank (major) and below were actually reasonable throughout the war, perhaps because we shared a worm’s-eye view of how it was being fought, at what cost, against what odds. During the course of my own experience, I do not recall thinking that anyone below the rank of colonel ever knowingly tried to mislead me about anything. Indeed, time and again, they were remarkably candid about what they were doing, why they were doing it, what their difficulties were, and how they saw the war, big picture and small.

The problems with the military were mostly at flag rank, with a few top generals and the admirals. Most did try to be honest, but the few who were not (and there were very few) tended to be of the very highest rank. Their disdain, distrust, and even outright disgust for the press polluted the information environment. This was the exception, not the rule, but it was enough to make a critical difference.

The public at home, understandably and admirably, in my opinion, wanted to believe their government. And because they wanted so badly to believe they were being told the truth, they believed what their leaders were telling them despite strong evidence to the contrary appearing every night on their television screens, every morning in their newspapers, and every week in their newsmagazines. The public at large did not seriously begin to question the war until casualties mounted to the point where every neighborhood saw a flag-draped coffin return or saw the boy down the street come back without his legs or his eyes. This grim and inevitable result of the war’s escalation was key in turning the tide of public opinion; it brought the war home to people in a much more forceful way than campus demonstrations or press coverage ever did. And, by the time of the Tet Offensive in 1968, the public’s rising doubts about government propaganda overflowed into general distrust. People started to realize one of two things: their government had either lied to them or was wildly mistaken. Perhaps it was guilty of both.