Real Story真故事26-当年那场越战

Real Story真故事26-当年那场越战

加老师微xin入群免费纠音！越南战争是指发生在1955年至1975年间冷战中的重要局部战争，又称为第二次印度支那战争，其本质是美国等资本主义阵营国家支持的南越（越南共和国）对抗由苏联和中国等社会主义阵营国家支持的北越（越南民主共和国）和“越南南方民族解放阵线”的一场战争。发生于冷战时期的越南（主战场）、老挝、柬埔寨。越战是二战以后美国参战人数最多、影响最重大的战争，最后美国在越南战争中失败。越南人民军和越南南方民族解放阵线最终推翻了越南共和国，统一了越南全国。在美国越战同时也是一场媒体战争，不同的先进录制设备的投入，记者真实报道遭受屏蔽审查等各种矛盾。

During 1955 to 1975, America lost the Vietnam War, but many still don’t know that it’s also a media war. To say it more simply, the American government didn’t like bad news, and the reporters reported them all-good and bad for them. This is Real Story. To learn more English and better, please add Frank’s Wechat(微。xin):frankinchina.

The Vietnam war is often referred to as the “first television war.” Media coverage showed the American public the reality of a foreign war, detached from the government’s optimistic depiction, uncensored on their televisions at home. Vietnam did not become a big story on American television until 1965, but it was a controversial one from the time that U.S. military personnel began to play a big role in the fight in the early 1960s. Officials of both the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments were extremely concerned about coverage of the war. Their criticism at first centered on reporting in newspapers and magazines and on wire services, as these news media began sending full-time correspondents to Vietnam several years before NBC's Garrick Utley became the first television journalist based in Saigon, beginning in mid-1964. Yet even though their assignments were brief and their numbers few, TV journalists still found that South Vietnamese authorities scrutinized their reporting and sometimes refused it, as Utley's colleague, Jim Robinson, learned during one of his occasional trips to Saigon while stationed in NBC's Hong Kong bureau. Offended by one of Robinson's stories, President Ngo Dinh Diem expelled the correspondent from the country in November 1962, despite protests from both the U.S. embassy and journalists in Saigon.

The Kennedy administration used less heavy-handed methods to manage the news from Vietnam. Administration officials tried to play down U.S. involvement in what it described as a Vietnamese war, even as the president sharply increased U.S. military personnel from several hundred to more than sixteen thousand. Yet Kennedy and his advisers rejected the military censorship of news reporting that had prevailed in previous twentieth-century wars .Instead, U.S. officials in Saigon mixed patriotic appeals "to get on the team" with upbeat statements about South Vietnamese military success and misleading information about what were real in the war.

The administration's efforts at news management collapsed during the Buddhist crisis of 1963, as horrifying images of the fiery suicides of monks protesting government restrictions on religious expression appeared in American television news reports and on the front pages of newspapers. What the U.S. embassy called the "press problem" worsened, as reporters not only mistrusted official sources because of their wrong management of information, but contributed to a public debate about whether the Diem government's liabilities were so great that it might not be able to prevail in the war against the National Liberation Front.

The administration of Lyndon B. Johnson in many ways followed its predecessor's pattern of news management as it expanded U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam in 1964 and 1965. Johnson and his principal advisers believed that domestic support was critical to the U.S. war effort, but worried "that our public posture is fragile." Like its predecessor, the Johnson administration ruled out censorship of the news in favor of a system of voluntary cooperation in withholding certain kinds of military information. "Because we are fools" was the explanation that the president gave one group of journalists for this choice. Yet administration policymakers repeatedly considered censorship and rejected it for fear of damage to official credibility. They also hoped that an ambitious program of public relations would ensure favorable coverage of the U.S. war effort.

Yet the "information problem" continued.Many reporters distrusted the daily official briefings in Saigon.While some journalists considered these briefings a mixture of spin, exaggeration, and half-truths, others concluded that the information officers told " lies." Evidence for this darker interpretation came from Arthur Sylvester, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, who turned a social occasion in Saigon in July 1965 into a nasty confrontation when he sneered at reporters, "Look, if you think that any American official is going to tell you the truth, you're stupid."

As the war became more controversial and public support for his Vietnam policies declined, Johnson made more extreme charges. He told the president of NBC News in February 1967 that "all the networks, with the possible exception of ABC, were against him," that they were "infiltrated," and that he was "ready to move on them if they move on us." The following month, he alleged that CBS and NBC were "controlled by the Vietcong," and later that year he insisted, "I can prove that Ho [Chi Minh] is a son-of-a-bitch, if you let me put it on the screen—but they [the networks] want me to be the son-of-a-bitch."

When many reporters began to describe the war as a mess in mid-1967, the Johnson administration launched a new public relations campaign aimed at persuading the American people that the United States was indeed making progress in achieving its goals in Vietnam. Believing that the "main front" of the war was "here in the United States," Johnson urged his advisers "to sell our product," since he insisted that "the Administration's greatest weakness was its inability to get over the complete story" on Vietnam. The Progress Campaign produced increased public support for Johnson's Vietnam policies.  "

 After being drafted in 1969, Tom Geerdes served as an Army medic in the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam and Cambodia. Like many veterans, he returned home a changed man. At our show, Tom shared his long journey toward healing with his daughter, Hannah Campbell.

  I'm glad you came back" Sometimes people fail to realize the families they have waiting for them and living with the fear every morning they'll awake with the knowledge their brother, father, cousin, sister, wife, husband are dead and will never walk through the front door of their house ever again, just because of war.

Television coverage of the war got less as U.S. troops came home and U.S. casualties declined. Those stories that did air gave more attention to the social, political, and economic dimensions of a war that was again becoming mainly a Vietnamese conflict, one that to many Americans lacked the significance of earlier years, one that had simply gone on too long. In a report on the CBS Evening News about fighting  in April 1972, the camera showed the crumpled bodies of children, refugees who died when their truck hit a land mine. There would be more fighting, correspondent Bob Simon declared, and more that generals, journalists, and politicians would say about those battles. "But it's difficult to imagine what those words can be," Simon concluded. "There's nothing left to say about this war. There's just nothing left to say." #Written and edited文字作者：Frank X老师，转载请注明出处;

#voice and tech-work:语音录制：Frank X;

 #Background music背景音乐: Susan Boyle - I Dreamed A Dream；One direction-Story of my life

(免费纠音，像播音员一样说英语！加老师WEI 信入群吧！听取更多“真故事”系列，别忘记点赞和订阅哦~！对话题及节目有任何疑问请留言哦)~

##有关节目：“真故事”系列节目每个文字都是Frank老师选取于生活中那些最平凡但却最打动人心弦的真实故事，这些故事可以很鸡汤，也可以很令人思考，感谢那些与老师分享故事的朋友们。同时，如果你有这样的故事，或者想学习口语可以私信老师哦，如果适合节目，老师会制作成新的一期节目与大家分享哦****