Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of TET ....

"Big Story" is the recounting of how the "American press and television reported and interpreted the crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington". I would dearly love to be able to say that author Peter Braestrup concurs with my long held conclusion that the American media were all left-wing, sympathetic to Communism and knowingly lied when they reported that the American and South Vietnamese military victory over the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces in the 1968 Tet offensive was actually a disaster. In fact, while Braestrup does meticulously report what many might consider the misdeeds of the press in their reporting on Vietnam, he concludes that it was a mixture of factors that led to media's ultimate reportorial failure. He is, of course, right. General William Westmoreland was not a paragon a virtue when it came to dispensing the facts. The military staff assigned to liase with the media, Braestrup demonstrates, was essentially inadequate in many, many ways. Then there was the dynamic duo of Lyndon Baines Johnson and Robert McNamara who believed they were military and political geniuses and were neither. Though published decades ago, Braestrup informs the present day. American media has become more stridently left-wing and more intent on misleading and misinforming the public while pursuing their own political and ideological goals. Baestrup tracks the trajectory of the competitive press corps in Vietnam, particularly the television people who were coming into their ascendancy. For the TV people, images mattered, not facts. They needed material to engage eyeballs, not minds. It was logical that the images be violent even though they didn't tell the true story. The news anchors weren't objective readers of facts: they were advocates of the America as the oppressor theory and they echoed the shouts of the people clogging the streets with their protests. Braestrup concluded his analysis of the media's performance by calling it "an extreme case", but warned as well - and bear in mind this was in 1977 - that "unsatisfactory performance [of the media] in another surprise crisis or near-crisis appears likely". What Braestrup did not foresee was that the media, led by network television, would get into the business of manufacturing crises and that the media's tilt toward the left would become more pronounced. Peter Braestrup passed away in 1997. It is our loss that we did not have his insight on the performance of the media in Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. It undoubtedly would have been enlightening. Jerry

I just finished this book in the last couple of days. Excellent all the way through. Carefully crafted examples of what was right and WRONG with the media coverage of the Tet 68 Offensive during the Vietnam war, and the war overall, show the problems with the reporting: in some glaring cases, the bias. I specifically could relate to recent conflicts the comments made about the speed of a story from the start of an event to publication and how that sometimes led to the wrong analysis and conclusion. The perceptions set forth by the media, either deliberately or by editing mistakes, to the population were in cases wrong and led people in a path to make decisions based on faulty information. For a long time I wondered if my opinions and own analysis of the Vietnam conflict were ill conceived. This book put those concerns in their proper place: even though it was a terrible event, maybe the US could have been done with it sooner and with a better result for all had the true facts, as the media could gather, come to light for the general population instead of an inherently flawed approach with a lot of bias added. Given that the book was written by a Journalist in the middle of it all gives great validity to the book: yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

A thorough critique of the press coverage of the Tet Offensive. Amazingly, the press almost universally got it wrong. The U.S. and the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) actually won the battle; the Viet Cong were decimated and never recovered as a fighting force (The regular North Vietnamese Army shouldered the major fighting from then on). It took the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) four years to build up enough strength for another major offensive (1972), which led to the Christmas bombings of Hanoi and the "peace accords." Written by a journalist, this book is critical but not ideological; the press is not "the bad guy" here. There is plenty of blame to go around. The military misrepresented the strength of the Viet Cong, for its own reasons, and the press went on to misrepresent the battle for its own reasons. The real heresy of this book is revealing how the ARVN and U.S. forces aquitted themselves exceedingly well on the battlefield. Was the war "winnable" on the ground? It certainly wasn't "winnable" politically, but credit should be given to the servicepeople on the ground (and in the air) who did in fact win the battle tactically and strategically. The original edition was published by Westview Press in 1977; Yale University Press issued an abidged version in 1983 and 1986; another edition was published by Presidio Press in 1994.

This book was a real eye-opener for me. As a Vietnam veteran who served in Vietnam in 1967-68-69-70 and 71, I had always held fast to the premise that media coverage of Tet 68 sabotaged the possible successful conclusion of the Vietnam war in our favour. I had always believed that the american press had deliberately skewed their war coverage towards the negative side. Braestrup's well documented study of press coverage of the Tet 68 offensive made me re-think all my knee jerk attitudes towards the press. He presents meticulous summaries of coverage by the major american newspapers and television networks. While some individual papers and networks might have had an anti-war bias most tried to give balanced coverage. When Braestrup gets into the logistical details of the in media coverage of the war, he really enlightens us. It's easy in hindsight to assume that todays wall to wall coverage of world news was the norm in Vietnam. Braestrup shows us in great detail the limitations in personnel and technology that constrained media coverage of the Vietnam war If you read his analysis, compiled from his own in-country experience with an in depth analysis of most major news outlets reporting from Vietnam during the war, you as a reader are enlightened and forced to rethink your own pre-conceived notions about the subject. I found this work one of the most illuminating works of modern history that I have even read. It's interesting just from Braestrups first hand retelling of his own part in history as a practicing journaslist. His analysis of journalistic coverage of the Vietnam War is incredibly stimulating and educational. I highly recommend this work to war correspondents, editors and journalism students interested in getting war coverage just right. John Reid