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Excerpt from an editorial about the Vietnam War

Broadcast on CBS Television, February 27, 1968

It is generally agreed that American media coverage of the Vietnam War had a major impact on public attitudes toward the conflict. But historians, military leaders, lawmakers, community leaders, and ordinary Americans have different opinions about the nature and quality of coverage provided by U.S. television and print journalists in Vietnam. Defenders of the American press in Vietnam claim that the journalists informed the American people about the true nature of the war at a time when their political and military leaders repeatedly deceived them. But critics in the government, the military, and elsewhere claim that the media was dominated by antiwar journalists who poisoned the American public against the war by delivering superficial and negative coverage of the conflict. Three decades later, the...