Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington

by Braestrup, Peter Braestrup

One of the most bitter and enduring conflicts in recent American history is the fight between the news media and the military over access to U.S. combat operations in Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf War. The legacy of Vietnam looms large. Among many military folk, the belief persists that adversarial newsmen, especially TV newsmen, lost the war. Veteran journalists variously contend that their reporting merely exposed deep flaws in U.S. strategy or conveyed Vietnam's realities. Still casting a long shadow over this recurring debate is the Communists' surprise 1968 Tet Offensive and how the media reported and analyzed it. Historians agree that Tet resulted in a costly battlefield setback for Communist forces. Yet its effects back home brought on a political crisis, the virtual abdication of the president, and a change in national policy that led to the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973 and Hanoi's conquest of the south in 1975.

Genres: History, War, Nonfiction, Journalism

1446 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Frederick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published in 1977 as a two volume set this exhaustive review of how the American press mishandled the Tet offensive and the battles for Hue and Khe Sanh should be required reading for every embedded journalist going out with a military unit. Reporting lies, misreporting, cherry-picking which facts to deal with, exaggerating the enemy's strengths and extolling their virtues over your own allies, and outright, in my opinion, treasonous behavior ruled the day for journalism in that time period from the beloved Walter Cronkite to Peter Arnett of later Gulf War fame. Agenda driven news reporting and sloppy fact-checking were the rule of the day. This book, written by the former Saigon bureau chief for the Washington Post during Tet, is very important for understanding how the Vietnam War was impacted by the filter between the fighting man in the field and the public back at home. It is thorough, balanced, and quite informative. You must have it if you are a student of the Vietnam conflict.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a friend years back who used to refer to "the left-wing of the Pentagon". What she meant, of course, was that the U.S. military has become risk-adverse, from Central America in the 1980s to the Balkans in the 1990s to Ukraine today. This really pisses off conservatives. What do you do if your country is engaged in a horrific, genocidal and worst of all losing war? Why, blame it on the media, of course. Peter Braestrup, Viet Nam War correspondent for the WASHINGTON POST herewith presents a conspiracy theory that the United States had really won the war by 1968 and that a group of journalist gangsters, liars, and loons, from Mr. Credibility himself, Walter Cronkite, to the "biased, liberal media" intentionally misreported the Tet offensive of January 1968 as a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong victory when, in fact, the U.S. and its gallant South Vietnamese allies broke the back of the communist war machine, which suffered horrendous losses. BIG STORY was a huge success in its day. Bear in mind that this book originally came out in 1977, just two years after that last American helicopter took off from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon. Americans needed its own version of the German "stab-in-the-back" theory of why they had been defeated but instead of Jews and Socialists Braestrup chose newspapermen and TV cameramen and anchors.

Every fact Braestrup presents about the NVA and Viet Cong failures during Tet is most likely true: The communists suffered casualties in the tens of thousands; the uprising they expected to take place in the South against the Saigon regime never got off the ground; and while they took brief possession of every provincial capital in South Viet Nam they were eventually expelled from all of them. As for American casualties, the U.S. sustained more fatalities or Killed in Action (KIA) in 1969, the year after Tet. All of this is true, but SFW? Braestrup fails to understand that modern war has become the extension of television by other means. The NVA and Viet Cong did not have to win the Tet offensive militarily, only to show the world that the U.S. could not protect the very enclave it had carved out, South Viet Nam, and they could infiltrate their troops into the South, including the American embassy in Saigon, without a single South Vietnamese blowing their cover. Braestrup has also forgotten the adage that in war who wins is not he who bleeds the most but he who bleeds and still gets up to fight again. The American supposed liberal media did not lose the Viet Nam War for the United States. The American government failed by misreporting the war and misleading the American people into believing that "if we just put in another 100,000 or 200,000 or 250,000 soldiers into Viet Nam this war will be over by tomorrow". Or, as folkie singer Phil Ochs sang, "let's not call them soldiers, let's call them advisors, that's a good word to use in case we lose".