combat- preferabley mortal” (Streitmatter 192). This type of selective news coverage can be described as being no different than the censorship of previous wars, only now the censored material was that which showed patriotism.Not everybody believes that the media swayed public opinion, Daniel C. Hallin, author of the Uncensored War says Media and Vietnam disputes the theory that media during the 1960s and 1970s shifted toward "an oppositional relation to political authority" (Hallin 68). Hallin uses as his argument a sample of newscasts between 1965 and 1973, asserting that television coverage was quite favorable to administration policy before the Tet offensive of 1968, but that is grew significantly less favorable after that point. It is true that journalists were more likely to be critical in the late 1960s and 1970s than they had been in early 1961 when the New York Times agreed to suppress stories of the Bay of Pigs invasion. However, Hallin insists that no substantial change in journalistic ideology took place. He discards the notion that media coverage reflected society, stating that the increased negative coverage cannot be rightfully attributed to a change in the course of events. Instead, he allows that this shift in coverage must be explained as a response to a collapse of elite consensus on foreign policy. Hallin further contends that as an establishment institution, television reported the lack of consensus about the war as once it passed from the realm of illegitimate into the realm of legitimate controversy. Whatever the cause for swayed coverage, Hallin’s statements agree that television’s effect was seen, and that effect considerably skewed the public’s notions of war.The media also underwent drastic change during this war. As discussed earlier, and contradictory to what Hallin feels, the media and journalistic ideology did indeed change from dedicated to the public, to dedicated to the dol...
