During the Vietnam War the actual film had to be flown back to the US every day for the news

[NNN0LHI]

There was no Internet or any other system to send the days reports from the battlefield to make the evening news.

There were no 24/7 hour news channels back then either. Come to think of it there was no cable or satellite TV at all.

And yet back then we used to get more actual coverage of what was going on with that war than we ever get from Iraq or Afghanistan today.

Think about that.

Don

[JuniperLea]

1. But we were served up Westmoreland's...

Bogus death toll numbers every night with dinner. Some things never change.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

2. I thought about that yesterday,

when I watched that poor soldier's homecoming at Dover.

First time in eighteen years. Eighteen years.

Then I thought of what the evening news looked like during the Vietnam era, how we saw actual jungle scenes, wounded soldiers, bodies, all of it. Of course, the lies that accompanied the pictures were part of it, too. But the pictures remain in my head.

Seeing that lone coffin yesterday brought it all back - the outrage, the frustration, the getting up and going to do something about it.

That's how we stopped it - we saw the pictures ........................

[county worker]

3. It's because of the Vietnam war coverage that the news of war became more controlled.

Here is a story of mine. About four of us were resting in a building in Bein Hoa during Tet. A reporter from my home town newspaper the Dayton Daily News happened by and asked if any of us were from Dayton. I said yes and he asked if I wanted to make a statement about the war to the people back home in Dayton. I wanted to say that I opposed the war and President Johnson but he gave me a piece of paper to read that said just the opposite. I didn't do it and I didn't get to say what I wanted either.

Not everything from Nam was the truth either.

[sailor65]

4. Videotape? n/t

[NNN0LHI]

8. Yea I fixed it. We didn't have videotape back then

I think videotape came into being about late 1969?

Don

[sailor65]

10. It's funny,

I actually called my Dad up to see if maybe I was crazy and they had it when he was there. One of those things you get so used to you don't imagine ever NOT having it!

:-)

[ThomWV]

5. I'm not sure on this but I think they only had to fly it to Japan

And from there it was somehow sent via underseas cable. Might be wrong on that though.

[spanone]

6. i'm guessing we can count the number of 'journalists' in war zones on less than one hand

[TahitiNut]

7. Yes, and in WW2 folks got the films as part of Movietone News ... in the theaters.

While there WAS live TV that spanned the oceans, the quality was quite marginal. We did have data transmission between Nam and the States -- I used AutoDIN between Long Binh and the Pentagon. The news services regularly transmitted still photos.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. "In war, truth is the first casualty". Aeschylus Greek tragic dramatist (525 BC - 456 BC)

[DemoTex]

11. Read "Reporting Vietnam I&II," by various writers .. for insight on the news from Viet Nam.

"Reporting Vietnam I & II" is an excellent compendium of dispatches and essays from the Viet Nam war. Other excellent books about news reporting from Viet Nam include "Dispatches" by Michael Herr, "TET!" by Don Oberdorfer, and "The Cat From Hue" by John Laurence.

Peter Baestrup's "The Big Story" is almost an apologia for the anti-media elements of the military-industrial complex. It attempts to blame setbacks in Viet Nam on press coverage. However, it is worth reading for the perspective.

The worst book? By far it was "reporter" Elaine Shepard's "DOOM Pussy" (DOOM being the acronym for the Danang Officers' Open Mess .. or Officers' Club). Billed as a true story (parts may be), it is too weird to even be bad fiction.