Paper Soldiers: The American Press and the Vietnam War

Citing the widespread belief that the American press served as a kind of collective antiwar, antigovernment crusader throughout the Vietnam War, Wyatt reveals that the record shows instead a fluctuating mix of confrontation and cooperation between journalism and the government/military leadership during the 1962-1975 conflict. He traces the development of the press's reliance on information provided by the government from the days of the Eisenhower administration through the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations. He documents how the executive branch gradually increased its power to control, restrict and manipulate information--about the downing of the U-2 spy plane, for instance, about the Cuban missile crisis, and finally about the Vietnam War. Readers of this instructive study will be surprised to learn the extent to which the press's coverage of that war reflected, virtually unchallenged, official goverment handouts. Wyatt teaches at Centre College in Kentucky. (Apr.)