American Valor Quarterly Issue 1 - Winter 2007 | Page 20
The War in Vietnam
and the Media’s Role
By Emily Tibbitts
Editor’s note: Emily Tibbitts is a junior at Ashland University,
majoring in Political Science and Electronic Media Production with
a minor in journalism. She is an Ashbrook Scholar in the Ashbrook
Center for Public Affairs, and a recipient of Ashland’s Presidential
Scholarship. Emily served as an intern with the American Veterans
Center in 2007, with her major research project being a study of the
Vietnam War, the men and women who served there, and the media’s
role in the war. After much hard work, and diligent research, the
final product is the following story.
The Early Years
The war in Vietnam was not a war
like any previously experienced by
the American people. The United
States was looking for a victory
that was non-descript, un-defined
and largely misunderstood, making
it hard to comprehend why we
were there, why we were not
winning, and even more
importantly, what winning would look like. With the United
States military present only as advisors to the South
Vietnamese Military for the first years of conflict, it was
hard to convey the importance of the war, or why it was
even our war. Americans were accustomed to battlefronts
and pins on a map that showed progress against a clear enemy
who posed an obvious threat to our nation’s security. But
in Vietnam, we were fighting a war that did not appear to
be our