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Big Story Paperback – June 1, 1994

by Peter Braestrup (Author)

10 customer reviews

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Peter Braestrup, a veteran journalist and Saigon-based reporter for the Washington Post during the Tet Offensive, examines how the American press and television reported and interpreted the crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington. In its first edition, Big Story won the 1978 Sigma Delta Chi Award for research in journalism. Map.

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Editorial Reviews

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This isn't your usual focus on the events of Vietnam: rather, it's a refreshing examination of how the American press reported the Crisis of Tet in 1968, revealing the underlying politics influencing reporting styles and choices. This has been abridged and updated to appear in a new edition to reach new audiences, and is an excellent pick. -- Midwest Book Review

Paperback: 632 pages
Publisher: Presidio Press; Abridged edition (June 1, 1994)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0891415319
ISBN-13: 978-0891415312
Product Dimensions: 1.8 x 5.5 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
Average Customer Review: 10 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,060,177 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #973 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Library & Information Science > General
- #1827 in Books > History > Military > United States > Vietnam War
- #11438 in Books > History > Asia

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Good info.

ByAlexon July 17, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

A long long long read. Good info.

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Uncle Walter was a phony

ByJagleanon November 1, 2016

Format: Paperback

This is one of the books that must be read to understand how we "failed" in Viet Nam. Braestrup provides an excellent, fact-based review of the U.S. media's coverage of the TET Offensive including CBS-TV's phony footage of "downed" copters. The media played TET as a defeat of U.S. military -- more like it represents a defeat of U.S. journalistic ethics.

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Reporters on Trial

ByGeorge Burnson July 21, 2017

Format: Hardcover

Reporting the war in Vietnam was never easy. Just having reporters in Vietnam was expensive. Once there, they were skeptical of information supplied by the American command, but had few other sources. The Vietnanese were a mystery to them and they seldom got to the countryside. Rewrites by editors thousands of miles away did not help the quality of reporting and analysis. Tet surprised them and brought the war to them. Perhaps, the nadir of Vietnam reporting was reached during the coverage of the siege of Khe Sanh. Superficially, the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu seemed to provide a parallel to the marines surrounded at Khe Sanh. Virtually all reporters and their editors (as well as some officials and self-proclaimed experts) were engrossed by the "parallel." Comparison between American combat power in 1968 and French combat power in 1954 made it obvious that the base at Khe Sanh would not be overrun. Nevertheless, Dien Bien Phu fever persisted. Did poor reportage of Tet play a substantial role in the outcome of the war? Probably not. Even crediting an allied victory of sorts, the scope of the Tet attacks demonstrated that the Communists were far from defeated. The surprise was made worse by the Johnson Adminstration's pre-Tet public relations campaign aimed at convincing the American public that victory in Vietnam was in sight. The service provided by the author is to demonstrate that reportage, no less than government claims, should be viewed skeptically.

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Tracking media mishaps and bias in reporting the 1968 Tet offensive

ByJerry SapersteinHALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE VOICEon September 6, 2009

Format: Paperback

"Big Story" is the recounting of how the "American press and television reported and interpreted the crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington".

I would dearly love to be able to say that author Peter Braestrup concurs with my long held conclusion that the American media were all left-wing, sympathetic to Communism and knowingly lied when they reported that the American and South Vietnamese military victory over the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces in the 1968 Tet offensive was actually a disaster.

In fact, while Braestrup does meticulously report what many might consider the misdeeds of the press in their reporting on Vietnam, he concludes that it was a mixture of factors that led to media's ultimate reportorial failure. He is, of course, right. General William Westmoreland was not a paragon a virtue when it came to dispensing the facts. The military staff assigned to liase with the media, Braestrup demonstrates, was essentially inadequate in many, many ways. Then there was the dynamic duo of Lyndon Baines Johnson and Robert McNamara who believed they were military and political geniuses and were neither.

Though published decades ago, Braestrup informs the present day. American media has become more stridently left-wing and more intent on misleading and misinforming the public while pursuing their own political and ideological goals.

Baestrup tracks the trajectory of the competitive press corps in Vietnam, particularly the television people who were coming into their ascendancy. For the TV people, images mattered, not facts. They needed material to engage eyeballs, not minds. It was logical that the images be violent even though they didn't tell the true story. The news anchors weren't objective readers of facts: they were advocates of the America as the oppressor theory and they echoed the shouts of the people clogging the streets with their protests.

Braestrup concluded his analysis of the media's performance by calling it "an extreme case", but warned as well - and bear in mind this was in 1977 - that "unsatisfactory performance [of the media] in another surprise crisis or near-crisis appears likely". What Braestrup did not foresee was that the media, led by network television, would get into the business of manufacturing crises and that the media's tilt toward the left would become more pronounced. Peter Braestrup passed away in 1997. It is our loss that we did not have his insight on the performance of the media in Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. It undoubtedly would have been enlightening.

Jerry

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Eye-opening critique of the press and government

ByCharles Hugh Smithon May 16, 2006

Format: Paperback

A thorough critique of the press coverage of the Tet Offensive. Amazingly, the press almost universally got it wrong. The U.S. and the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) actually won the battle; the Viet Cong were decimated and never recovered as a fighting force (The regular North Vietnamese Army shouldered the major fighting from then on). It took the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) four years to build up enough strength for another major offensive (1972), which led to the Christmas bombings of Hanoi and the "peace accords."

Written by a journalist, this book is critical but not ideological; the press is not "the bad guy" here. There is plenty of blame to go around. The military misrepresented the strength of the Viet Cong, for its own reasons, and the press went on to misrepresent the battle for its own reasons. The real heresy of this book is revealing how the ARVN and U.S. forces aquitted themselves exceedingly well on the battlefield. Was the war "winnable" on the ground? It certainly wasn't "winnable" politically, but credit should be given to the servicepeople on the ground (and in the air) who did in fact win the battle tactically and strategically.

The original edition was published by Westview Press in 1977; Yale University Press issued an abidged version in 1983 and 1986; another edition was published by Presidio Press in 1994.