Customer Reviews

The Military and the Media: Why the Press Cannot Be Trusted to Cover a War

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It is easy to find scapegoats for the terrible blunders of Vietnam but far too few have been placed the blame for far too long. This book corrects such misconceptions and explains how the entire war was a misguided operation with no victory strategy. At the same time, when the military wins Tet, the media became more famous by reporting it as a false failure and LBJ like Truman before him refuses to commit to winning and abandoning our boys for two years by leaving the war for Republican presidents to end it. What makes the book different is that the author does not blame the failures on Media bias like most critics. He blames Media's incompetence about the realities of military operations. When you combined such illiteracy with not even attempting to learn about South Vietnamese politics, while you end up missing the basic tools to report about the war and in the end, all lose. Yet, policies decided by the National Security Advisors failed time and time again because they could not agree to a solution to win or withdraw. So the media is not entirely responsible but they were the only winners along with the communists. At the same time, almost all of these so called educated reporters went on to stellar careers in the media, which says even less about the qualifications of our current mentors of the news. It is a good tool for future reporters who want to do a fine job on reporting events to learn what they must know before they write or go on television. I highly recommended.