Customer Reviews

Paper Soldiers: The American Press and the Vietnam War

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As a graduate student of history, I know that you cannot possibly write about every aspect of anything (especially the Vietnam War) in a book. If one were to write about everything on the Vietnam War, there would be a library full of volumes. Wyatt has chosen to focus on one aspect, one that has been ignored so often (which is why the previous reviewer can only cite one public avenue - television). Many books have been written on the role of television. The challenge to historians is to find something new, and Wyatt does a beautiful job of it. The intricacies he finds within the paper media are amazing, and his analysis never fails.

Wyatt is an incredible historian and an equally incredible man. I absolutely recommend this book.

This book is, for starters, a fairly easy read, and doesn't require much background knowledge of Vietnam. While it deflates the often overglorified view of the role of the press in Vietnam, the book does seem to favor the press over the South Vietnamese and U.S. governments. Wyatt stops short of actually laying blame of any negative reporting on the government, but they are certainly presented as the main indirect source. As for the common thread of television mentioned in other reviews, his attention paid to the topic is disappointing. While television should not have been the focus of the book, it probably deserves more than the one or two pages alloted to it. Still, overall the book does an excellent job of clarifying the role of news media in the war. I would certianly recommend reading it in order to gain a more enlightened view on this topic.

Paper Soldiers is an in-depth look at print media and those who wrote it during the Vietnam War. Wyatt has really given us a LOT of information here:

- The media build-up during America's march to war.

- How, when and with whom the government's media briefings were held.

- Relationships between reporters (including preferential treatment of those newsmen who worked for organization giving pro-government coverage).

- Life in Saigon for the hundreds of newsmen who flocked there.

- Who really was in control of the flow of information, and how it was disseminated to the public.

Yes, Wyatt leans toward the media and away from the government, but in comparison to a lot of other Vietnam War sources out there this one weighs heavy on facts and light on commentary and/or bias.

And it purposely leaves out television news (except for comparison against print content) as a subject that's already been covered in depth.

This book just does not cover the most important issues that arise from this controversial subject. The author goes on and on citing examples of how the press and the journalists were manipulated by the individuals who were responsible for supplying them with up to date military information. I agree that these arguments are supported well and hard to refute. But the main problem I have deals with the following: DURING THE COURSE OF THE ENTIRE BOOK HE SPENDS ONLY THREE PARAGRAPHS DISCUSSING THE TELEVISION MEDIA! His argument for this is that the television coverage only represented approximately 5% (This is from memory, and all that I know for sure was that it was very much less than what anyone might expect.) of the total coverage of the events of the war. That, to me, is just a cop out as anyone who knows anything about the Vietnam conflict also knows that it was called "The Television War." Since he manages to completely avoid probably the most important aspect of press coverage from the war with such an irrelevant and weak argument for skirting it, he is left with arguments for press manipulation that hold water as well as a bucket with no bottom