Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

by Edward S. Herman

With regard to the American war, the PBS series makes a conscious effort to be balanced, to present all sides, to take no side. The French, in contrast, are treated far more harshly, as brutal colonialists, with no pretense of balance. Peter Biskind comments: Whereas the narrator referred to Ho Chi Minh and his followers as “rebels,” “nationalists,” or “the Vietnamese resistance,” as long as they were fighting the French, once the Americans arrive they are invariably “Communists” or just “the enemy.” Whereas Bao Dai is the “playboy emperor picked by the French,” Nguyen Cao Ky and Nguyen Van Thieu are simply the “government.” Whereas French troops just released from Japanese prison camps go “on a rampage, arresting and attacking Vietnamese,” American troops engage in the was-it-or-wasn’t-it massacre at Thuy Bo.