With regard to the course of public opinion, the Freedom House study decisively refutes its own thesis. It includes a chapter on public opinion polls by Burns Roper, which demonstrates, as Braestrup concedes, that “there is no available evidence of a direct relationship between the dominant media themes in early 1968 and changes in American mass public opinion vis-à-vis the Vietnam war itself,” but rather a continuing “slow drift toward the dove side” after an initial wave of support for the president and “frustration and anger at the foe” during the Tet offensive.
