Reporting Vietnam-Eight Articles
MARSHALL, MALCOLM W. BROWNE, ROBERT SHAPLEN, JOHN MECKLIN, JOHN HUGHES, PETER ARNETT and HORST FAAS
Reporting Vietnam: Eight War Correspondents Rebut SIA Marshall's 'Press Failure in Vietnam' General S.L.A. Marshall's disgusting polemic, "Press Failure in Vietnam," is an insult to the memory of...
...We will say, however, that our failings and the failings of others who have come to Vietnam can not be attributed to cowardice, laziness or fretful wives...
...almost, one might say, sure-fire copy...
...Army's First Division...
...Most stateside editors, moreover, want their men to avoid excessive risk...
...President Johnson has taken individual reporters to task for their papers' mesmerism with the military picture and their failure to write enough, as he sees it, on pacification and the problems of economic, social and political reforms...
...All well over 40 years old, they have delighted in deprecating their younger colleagues, often in a distinctly "sour grapes" tone...
...the deplorably slow evolution of a non-Communist political system in South Vietnam...
...Marshall suggests pretty crass motives to justify front-line coverage...
...We wonder what Mrs...
...For the diligent reader, more information is available on this struggle than on any conflict in history...
...The only difference is that now most of them are worth only a few paragraphs on page 37...
...reporters must lean heavily on the sidelights Marshall deprecates to get any copy at all...
...But this has not made it any safer or easier for war correspondents...
...In my estimate, there have been several sensitive reporters-Bob Shaplen of the New Yorker, Takashi Oka of the Christian Science Monitor, Gavin Young of the London Observer-who have sensed the subtleties of this other dimension and tried to communicate it...
...This is the exact opposite of the fact...
...All institutions, including private corporations, try to make themselves look good, and every reporter on every newspaper in the country encounters this kind of thing every day...
...Sam Castan or Mrs...
...And he was 57 at the time...
...One is that it is high time for people to put aside the idea that the measure of a good correspondent is the number of times he has been shot at...
...To be sure, the engagement at Ia Drang was important, but perhaps somewhat less so for a reporter who has campaigned many times before in the Ia Drang valley than for a relatively green observer like General Marshall...
...In any case, I qualified myself to write on military affairs not primarily as a soldier (I do not have a single credit in military schooling) but through independent study as a member of the working press...
...Marshall's conviction that reporting of the Vietnam war has been less than perfect...
...It is not at all the same...
...That he called us cowards despite the 94 casualties under enemy fire indicates he will be satisfied only with a far greater sacrifice...
...Granted, Vietnam has been a slow-burning war compared with earlier ones...
...the relationship between the situation inside Vietnam and such political issues as escalation of air attacks on the North or a negotiated settlement...
...To be sure, what is lacking is perspective coverage, putting into proper focus all the battles of the southwest monsoon period, as General Marshall is doing, and I shall look forward to his book...
...Man, talk about cynical faddish-ness...
...By and large, however, there is little that is new or different about the government's shortcomings in press relations in Vietnam...
...For Marshall, Vietnam means only one thing-combat...
...Several years ago, another American general expressed a similar attitude toward the press when he snapped at the New York Times' Homer Bigart, "Why the hell don't you get on the team...
...aid, the protean Saigon political situation that could sweep away all the hard won victories in the field if uncontrolled, or the impact of the war on the rest of Southeast Asia...
...This issue is of too great importance to our fighting forces and their domestic support, and of too great importance to the press and the nation, to be met with personal invectives, ridicule, muscle-flexing and windiness...
...one handles the daily briefings and diplomatic affairs...
...For the U.S., World War II lasted three years and eight months...
...In Vietnam, there are little Nor-mandies every day, and they kill soldiers and newsmen just as dead as the big one in 1944...
...In my most recent four years of experience in Vietnam, I have known cases where a correspondent has gone out in the field for several weeks and waited for a major action...
...The war-any war-is good copy...
...He writes of desk-bound newsmen, "It is enough to say to them that they may be defaulting on their one great opportunity to achieve journalistic success that will make life more pleasant for them and their families in the future...
...They are granted their own special helicopters, dined with commanding generals, flattered, given special confidences and sent on their way...
...It is one more gratuitous attack on the Vietnam press corps, of a type that has come all too frequently in the past four years from Marshall, the editors of Time magazine, Joe Alsop, Keyes Beech of the Chicago Daily News, the late Marguerite Higgins and Jim Lucas...
...The protest of a press service that it cabled so many stories or that its correspondents performed deeds of valor, true though the assertions may be, does not answer the crucial question: "How can you say you are doing the best possible job if your coverage is so superficial that those who try to understand the war are only baffled...
...I submit that in a war like Vietnam it is good to know how our GIs are getting along, but it is vastly more important to know what the war is all about, where it seems to be going and what the Vietnamese are doing and thinking...
...There are hundreds of highly mobile hostile and friendly units engaged in endless maneuvers, always seeking an advantage in one way or another...
...Did any of them result in a breakthrough...
...it is Bob Poos who works for the Associated Press, not Bob Boos...
...goes to the negotiating table with the Communists...
...The legitimate uneasiness as to whether U.S...
...But since I have proposed no such ordeal and merely suggest that correspondents seek to understand and report the war as a whole, the bathos of some of the responses just lowers the discussion to the level of a barroom slanging match...
...Were the General able to spend some time with the regular members of the American press in Vietnam, he might not only learn something of their personal and professional problems, about which he professes his ignorance, but also of Vietnam's problems, about which he does not profess his ignorance though he profusely indicates it...
...Indeed, the fact that so eminent an authority as Marshall could write as he did, points up one great failure-our failure to demonstrate what we have really been doing in Vietnam over all these years of agonizing frustration and danger...
...indeed, many correspondents, including some who dissent so strongly here, expressed agreement with most of my criticism when I told it to them face-to-face...
...Maybe that is because he was accorded the privileges of the VIP newsmen who frequently come in from the United States for a "quick look" at the war...
...If the young correspondents covering Vietnam are more cynical than those covering earlier wars, they are also smarter and generally far better informed...
...troops...
...Huynh Thanh My and their children might think of Marshall's observations...
...First Division, the U.S...
...Almost nobody who has ever had anything to do with Vietnam is neutral and uninvolved, and this has led to a deplorable succession of official attempts to "get" the newsmen there because their reporting conflicted with the official line-including even direct pressure on editors and publishers by the White House...
...For the troops, there are few tangible results beyond the rice caches burned and the handful of suspects picked up...
...They have simply not found this worthwhile...
...But I would not say, as Marshall does, that "the war is being primarily covered for all bleeding hearts and Senator Fulbright...
...They can do this because they have the manpower, and because almost any incident is grist for the wires...
...Equally or even more importantly, he must talk to Vietnamese and American civilian officials in the field who are struggling with the economic, political and propaganda aspects of the effort...
...Since the United States is an invited guest in Vietnam, it could conceivably be invited out...
...For his time (and I have known reporters who have spent up to two fruitless weeks in the field) the reporter has nothing to show but a suntan and a feeling of physical fitness, both rather enjoyable but hardly what a reporter is paid for...
...These are the operations that stand a good chance of coming to grips with the Vietcong...
...I suggest that it is equally self-defeating to attempt covering too little...
...That attitude might be appropriate in covering the theater...
...This does not make for easy operations, either for the troops or the correspondents, since they still must face exhausting jungle marches, heat prostration, red ants, various jungle sicknesses, and most of all, enemy harassment in the form of sniping, mines and booby traps...
...The policy today is more enlightened than it was a few years ago, but it is still loaded with slanted euphemisms, e.g., a ban on official use of the word "ambush" to describe an attack upon U.S...
...Marshall was not there...
...It may not be the duty of the Army, as S.L.A...
...I also do not agree with Marshall that there has been a high level of competence at official briefings...
...The last complaint of its commander, Major General John Norton, is that his outfit is being ignored by the newspapers...
...Most often they are small company- or battalion-sized operations that go without fanfare or elaborate preparation...
...In fact, The New Leader's cover picture (a G.I...
...and Being With Troops, while an important part of the "game" at this juncture, nonetheless remains only a part...
...Its information officers have rooms stacked high with press clippings...
...Even if the reporter out in the bush hears about the story he is missing, which he often does not, it may take him a day or two to organize a ride back to Saigon...
...never been arrested for having legitimately covered the news...
...I can not say whether in the course of shuttling between the two careers since then I have spent more time in the military or in journalism...
...I do not agree with General Marshall's views that the press has done a bad job in covering the Vietnam war, and that "the majority of U.S...
...Marshall regrets that reporters file stories on such "off-beat" incidents as Buddhist demonstrations, Americans dying from their own bombs, or "hapless" Vietnamese civilians accidentally killed by U.S...
...And it is particularly unhelpful to attack the integrity of these men because some of their reporting is controversial...
...In fact, such outbursts give grounds for doubt that the author can come to grips objectively with any problem far transcending his own importance (and my own...
...forces...
...But that Vietnam is far more complex than merely a test of arms is equally undeniable...
...one covers politics, flying with the Prime Minister all over Vietnam and trying to figure out the complexities of the political scene...
...If Marshall's interest is reporters working for American news outlets, he will find, I believe, less than 100 working in the country at any given moment-at times considerably less-after subtracting from the list photographers, technical members of TV crews, newsmen and crews accredited to non-American news organizations, wives accredited but working only in Saigon, newsmen on rotation in Hong Kong or elsewhere, and last, but far from least, the steady stream of journalistic visitors who are registered on arrival and therefore get their names on the next monthly list, only to be gone by the time the list is published...
...This phenomenon has proved a constant source of friction between the military and civilian sides of the U.S...
...Unlike a soldier who sometimes can only accomplish his mission by accepting possible injury or death, a journalist's mission includes living to tell about it...
...You don't understand that in most cases, Asians haven't had much freedom or land for the Communists to take...
...It is true that, on occasion, this has led to sensationalism and exaggeration...
...And we will all carry brutal memories for the rest of our days from datelines like Song Be, Binh Gia, Ap Bac, Ba Gia, Plei Me, Dong Xoai, Cai Lai, Bong Son (which Marshall incorrectly spells) and hundreds of others...
...Because it has performed spectacularly more has been written about that Division than any other unit in Vietnam...
...So let us say he has spent around four months in Vietnam in recent years...
...correspondents don't give a damn" about reporting individual battles...
...Returning to the U.S...
...Marshall, in effect, declares that American newsmen (except for some of those from his own generation) are mostly chicken...
...In Vietnam, however, no evidence has been produced to show that any non-Vietnamese are fighting in the enemy infantry ranks (although Russian missile advisors and Chinese experts are helping out in the North...
...As a group, they drink less and work harder...
...As one of the nation's leading military analysts, General Marshall is close to many of the officers of the U.S...
...Except for a handful of bureau managers and reporters lashed to their Saigon offices by demanding stateside editors, I do not know of any reporter in Vietnam who has not made at least an occasional foray into the battle area...
...We are supposedly there at the invitation of the Vietnamese government to protect the people-not to kill them...
...It seems to me the American public should be able to answer this question: Does it want to pay the price in blood, effort and treasure that our program in Vietnam will surely cost...
...People like Mert Perry and Francois Sully (Newsweek), Peter Arnett and Horst Faas (Associated Press), Beverly Deepe (freelance), Michel Renard (freelance), Neil Sheehan (New York Times) and many others have laid their lives on the line-not ten, but hundreds of times in the past five years...
...It seems that what the General demands is a "war correspondent" out of the crusade of the '40s- that romantic figure who acted more as the civilian adjunct of the Public Information Office, more a propagandist for home-front morale- epitomized by the saintly Ernie Pyle -than a critical observer of the scene...
...To this respected military historian, apparently, Vietnam is just like every other war America has fought...
...And if American readers are nevertheless uninformed, perhaps the real fault is theirs, because they decline to make the effort to read about the less dramatic aspects of the situation, just as they duck the reams of thoughtful studies on what lay behind the angry Negroes in Watts...
...In terms of substantial American involvement, the Vietnam war has been going on for five years already, and no end is in sight...
...The Vietcong and North Vietnamese themselves do not now really believe they can take on the military might of the United States and win a military victory...
...lying in the mud) in the issue featuring Marshall's story was taken by Associated Press photo-journalist John Nance while he was with the U.S...
...the social disintegration brought on in part by the massive American presence, and a hundred similar phenomena...
...First Cavalry Division go unsung, AP files will show otherwise...
...I would take issue with Marshall's claim that Operation Paul Revere II was essentially uncovered in the U.S...
...Our casualties have been: Seven killed, 87 wounded...
...He represents them as cowards, who "do not wish to expose their innocence" or "so fearful of the front that they cannot endure the thought of staying with it...
...When the fight is over, the winner frequently abandons the objective...
...The veterans spend more time in the field than anyone else, but they pick their operations carefully...
...When a hill, ridgeline or hamlet becomes an objective for one side or the other, it is important for a few hours or days...
...there we find only the tangents and sidebars.' Does Marshall include among the "tangents and sidebars" the struggle to establish a semblance of democracy, the attempts to win over the people to our side with elaborate pacification programs and vast infusions of U.S...
...But the outcome of the combat does finally count and deserves a thorough accounting - "dimensional coverage" as Shaplen puts it...
...We all fear getting killed-Sam did too...
...We wonder how many newsmen the General wants killed before he can declare that we are stoutly defending the flag...
...It is simply not true that reporters don't (as he says in his quaint soldierese) "get off their duffs" and go to the "front...
...There has been little improvement in the "handout psychology" that has been chronic among some Saigon newsmen for years-an attitude that the government owes them the story and that digging for it on their own is undignified or something...
...Only one or two of the truly young reporters -and they should not feel included in my general strictures-show a willingness to do it the hard way: to ask questions, soak up knowledge, and go where the action is...
...The hard core of newsmen in Vietnam grow weary of the endless ranting from their detractors...
...The General has a point in his charge that some of the reporting from Vietnam has been "unbalanced," but he is right for the wrong reasons...
...Many people, of course, pay lip service to the importance of the non-military aspects of the war...
...Washington has traditionally been a haven for a certain number of performing seals who have written their dispatches and analyses from the handouts, briefings, leaks and other standard sources that involve a minimum of labor and initiative...
...The key problem is not cowardice but superficiality...
...Marshall's invective thus is significant more as a symptom of continuing friction between newsmen and officials in Saigon than for its content...
...As chief historian of the European Theater during World War II, I of course had to treat problems of panoramic range and innumerable facets...
...Inevitably, Saigon has become infested with some of these people, and they are no different in Saigon from what they are in Washington...
...But in my opinion, they tell us almost nothing about how a war is going, even though they tell us in moving detail what our GIs are doing and suffering...
...Consequently, unlike the Korean or Pacific wars, correspondents seldom remain with a single body of troops for long periods of time...
...Marshall also notes that there are "350 war correspondents" in Vietnam...
...Some try it, or volunteer for patrolling, or accept the risks of the line infantryman, either because they feel a special duty or see the chance for a different kind of story...
...Bernard Kolenberg or Mrs...
...troops because it sounds as if they were outsmarted, and half-truths designed to paper over the fact that occasionally there is cause for concern about the state of things in Vietnam...
...This does not mean that to fulfill their responsibilities war reporters must "go over the top," or land with the first wave...
...Marines, another pair with the First Cavalry, and two more men with either the U.S...
...Armed Forces in Vietnam...
...He tastelessly points out that civilian casualties are "far less common than in France or Korea,' as though that excused the matter...
...There are grounds for legitimate complaint on both sides...
...To read his ill-considered lambaste is like hearing a hoarse voice from another age, a Cyrano in fatigues and jungle boots...
...For most of us, a bunk costs a dollar a night, meals cost about a buck a piece, cases of C Rations are available at $12 each, fatigues, helmets and jungle gear must be purchased on the Saigon black market, and when we get shot, it costs us $44 a day to get patched up at the Navy Hospital in Saigon...
...When a place like Ia Drang gets battled over a number of times (there will be many more fights there, I'm sure) it ceases to be front-page news...
...The General does not mention the internal crisis that shook South Vietnam during a good portion of his stay in the spring and summer of this year, except obliquely, in a discussion of what he calls "off-beat yarns.' Among these he includes "any demonstration or riot and especially a Buddhist demonstration-riot...
...The exciting evolution of an underdeveloped nation, the intriguing problem of politics, economics and a rural society colliding suddenly with the modern world, and the miseries of the people hold no interest for him...
...There have been hints that Premier Ky might boycott such talks, just as Ngo Dinh Diem refused to participate in the 1954 Geneva Conference, with serious political repercussions for everybody, but his position has been overlooked almost entirely...
...While he seems to be arguing for greater coverage of the minutiae of the military campaign, my criticism is that we have failed to communicate to the American public the subtleties of an entirely new type of Communist offensive where the main thrust is political and military actions are purely a means to an end...
...I do not say that they all go often or stay long, but then I don't see why they should...
...There have been some major "operations" in Vietnam, such as Paul Revere II, which Marshall cites, where over a period of weeks a division engages in a vast search and destroy drive to root out the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese...
...What the General apparently desires is reporting of the war for those who simply want to know "how it is being fought" and how good the chances are of victory...
...Such material is often classified and therefore hard to come by...
...But while I find most of Marshall's charges inaccurate, exaggerated or just ill-conceived, what really disturbs me is the conclusion they all point to: his definition of the proper role of the reporter- "the name of the game.' "The name of the game is Being With Troops...
...It results from maturing, we hope, on our part...
...That is the job the young correspondents Marshall so despises have done supremely well-better, indeed, than the American government at any time during the conflict...
...It is an offense against the other 87 reporters wounded there, some of them maimed, and a dishonorable slur on those doomed to become casualties in the years ahead...
...Did any of them permanently eliminate a major belligerent unit...
...The history of U.S...
...Not that the war is uncovered...
...As for Shaplen's more detailed criticism, if he says that the official briefings are bad because the correct information does not come in from the field, I would accept his word and hope that the Command takes heed...
...public information policy in Vietnam is a long and sorry tale of petty deception, ineptitude and sometimes arrogance...
...The suggestion was perfectly apt, and Marshall might have benefited from following it up rather than dismissing it out of hand...
...Marshall writes of the press that "the story of the war is not being told in its daily columns...
...Being With Troops is all and only, says Marshall, and don't confuse public opinion regarding the war with negative side-bars and offbeat tangents about what the Vietnamese feel and do, and what is happening to them...
...But for Marshall, apparently, all these considerations are incidental...
...I went as a correspondent (not a VIP) because I could not understand from what I read how the war was being conducted, or how its course was being affected by the growing U.S...
...It is in Saigon-and "noxious" is the right word for the atmosphere there-that the newsman must do the bulk of his digging, tapping the knowledge of the big American and Vietnamese agencies that receive reports from scores, or hundreds, of men in the field...
...The General evidently has never had his lungs seared by tear gas in a Saigon riot...
...Most other media neither have the men nor the space in their publications or networks to report every small fire fight...
...never had his wife threatened by political gangs (many of us have out wives with us...
...In the DMZ engagements, moreover, a number of correspondents did exemplary work covering the high-points, including the Battle for Hill 400...
...in August with the impression that Paul Revere I was leading to developments of great consequence, I closely examined the press coverage of Paul Revere II in an attempt to discern its proportions and significance...
...once we eschew thoroughness we yield our one decisive advantage over competitive media...
...The press record of war coverage in Vietnam speaks for itself...
...Marshall says, "to function as war reporter to the nation" (though the number of men it employs in that capacity might mislead people...
...This is particularly true when they find themselves outpaced day after day, not only in the running war reportage (definitely a young man's game) but in the writing of sober political background stories-at which the older men, theoretically, benefit from long experience...
...But nothing I read indicated that it had been a major event of the southwest monsoon campaigning...
...The reason for this is simple-the war in Vietnam is far more fluid...
...But this is besides the point- which is that Vietnam is not the conventional kind of conflict General Marshall knew in World War I and II and Korea...
...First a soldier in 1917, I became a member of the working press in 1922...
...On the other hand, there are countless operations that do draw a great deal of blood, and are interesting, if hair-raising, to both troops and correspondents...
...When we get killed, the Armed Forces charge us about $140 (plus other expenses) to get the loan of an aluminum casket and a MATS flight to Travis Air Force Base...
...We are trying to do better, and we feel we have done better...
...If you're going to die covering a war, it's a lot better to do it covering something important (not necessarily big) than spilling out your guts over a random enemy mine you stepped on while covering a massive operation resulting in "no significant enemy contact...
...That, at least, was my reluctant feeling after reading S.L.A...
...The eternal story of man's bravery is one of the noble themes of history...
...The veterans have long ago learned to take official invitations with a grain of salt and follow their instinct as to where the action will be...
...We have both covered Vietnam continuously since June 1962...
...These operations are planned in advance, and are so massive and cumbersome that the Vietcong generally has plenty of time to move his important forces out of the way...
...What we are really discussing here is a major segment of the American way, the vast sociological question of the impact of mass communication...
...Although my friend Shaplen is right in saying that some operations were well covered, he does not mention that others were untouched because the press had fallen into the irresponsible habit of giving full coverage only to commanders with flair or sex appeal whom they regarded as "hot copy...
...The American program is to help the people by protecting them from Northern aggression and internal terrorism, providing them with material aid and giving them the advice they need...
...What the General has written is yet another catalogue of all the hackneyed charges made by detractors of the American press in Vietnam since Diem, and to a similar purpose...
...He might also take a closer look at the figure of 350 he gives for the number of working correspondents in Vietnam today...
...Working on basically the principle of independent initiative, the AP Saigon bureau won three Pulitzer Prizes in three successive years...
...We fed you 51.5 columns last week...
...It is a painfully expensive task both in American lives and money...
...For a visiting fireman like Marshall, I imagine this was true...
...It is filtered through officials with special interests to promote, and a lot of it is wrong anyway...
...In Vietnam, unlike other wars, there is the added consideration that Being With Troops can mean days, or weeks, of slogging through paddies and rain forests with riflemen who never make contact with the enemy...
...And it is this story that I am afraid is not getting through...
...In some ways, they are perhaps more cautious...
...His suggestion that the late Look staffer Sam Castan would have paid the supreme sacrifice again if he had the chance, reflects the General's viewpoint, not the common soldier's...
...Who has...
...field forces, beginning in July 1965, the nature of the conflict underwent a major shift which should have resulted in a major readjustment on the part of the press...
...Surely, that was a time when those with Marshall's turn of mind were happier, when almost all problems were military and had military solutions, when everyone was, indeed, "on the team" and in agreement about "the name of the game...
...Finally, there are those who treat every war in modern times as a kind of sporting event, writing each dispatch as a hard-hitting cheer for the home team...
...In fact, to back up my confreres, I could cite many instances where, at the Five O'clock Follies, as the daily briefings are called, correspondents just back from an engagement have bluntly put the lie to what the briefing officer claimed happened in it...
...Is life more pleasant for these men now that they did not default on their "one great opportunity to achieve a journalistic success...
...This coverage was not remarkable...
...Combined with the widespread public bewilderment, frequently affirmed by opinion polls, regarding the essentials of the war, I submit that these reactions support my argument that-with some few exceptions which do not suffice to vitiate my point-the American press is doing a third-rate job in communicating the facts of the conflict...
...and during my last tour in Vietnam, out of 24 pieces I wrote for the press only one had to do with a combat situation...
...Certainly there has not been much competence on dealing with the elusive matter of body counts, a persistent sore point among correspondents...
...As for the sins of the newsmen, there is certainly substance to General Marshall's complaint that some of them have made a "fad" out of their feud with the officials, needlessly sneering and nit-picking at briefing officers who are doing the best they can under rules made by somebody else...
...That kind of reporter must travel frequently outside Saigon, but not only to visit combat units...
...A few of these operations are successful, but most are frustrating failures or semi-failures...
...Now that General Marshall has achieved some kind of an ultimate in purple-worded abusiveness, perhaps it's a good time to bury the feud and get on with the war...
...forces should be in Vietnam at all has made this an issue of serious public debate...
...So the key to victory does lie in that facile phrase which is no less true for being trite: "Winning the hearts and minds of the people...
...but when I have criticized the press the reaction has always been violent outraged emotion-though I have often helped fight its battles when it has been failed by the military or some other bureaucracy here or abroad...
...Being a war correspondent worthy of the name is a dangerous and exacting business that cannot be done by aspiring youngsters who know nothing of the armed establishment and are unwilling to learn...
...They know that the average big search-and-clear or hunter-killer operation is unlikely to be interesting...
...They believe that by applying pressure at the right places, at the right times and in the right amounts, they can cause the United States to lose heart and retire-and thus bring about the political collapse of the South Vietnamese regime...
...Although, fortunately, the majority of the press corps recognizes that Vietnam comprises far more than combat, American troops in combat is obviously an important story and must be fully reported...
...The other is that whatever is wrong with American newsmen is not limited to the men in Vietnam, and if only for charitable reasons the endless debate about their virtues and shortcomings should be terminated...
...General Marshall is a historian and professional soldier and has approached the question of Vietnam news coverage accordingly...
...The game of the correspondent assigned to Vietnam is properly named Vietnam...
...The official attitude in Saigon is an unpleasant projection of a kind of instinctive reluctance of the Johnson Administration to level with the people-the so-called "credibility gap"-and it is particularly annoying out there because it relates to events in which American soldiers are dying...
...While it is fine to entertain the American public with breezy, gung-ho stories about the Vietnam war, it is selling America short to do only this...
...effort with it, is nothing more than an off-beat yarn played up out of press perversity...
...When action has occurred, it has invariably been concentrated in a short time span, a night and a day, or at best a few days, before the Communists have broken off and withdrawn to recuperate...
...Since some of your correspondents have grossly misunderstood my article, let me first restate its thesis loud and clear: The national press as a whole-with a very few individual and institutional exceptions-is doing a poor job of reporting the military aspects of the Vietnam war...
...The answers, of course, are No...
...Though he tries to provide it in his own writing, he must know, as I do, that the words of none of us travel very far and that a description of our own performance is not an adequate response to criticism of the general prevailing situation...
...officials and their Vietnamese counterparts...
...On the matter of military coverage, Marshall believes the present crop of reporters in Vietnam is too sedentary...
...These men are important for military morale...
...It is the one area in Vietnam's four military zones where the fighting is more nearly conventional, where the problems are more like those of the wars the General knew so well- and presumably loved so much...
...I am not arguing whether this is right or wrong, but it is a fact...
...Yet I doubt whether the press has succeeded in conveying to the American public the brutal fact that we can take territory in Vietnam with great gallantry and sacrifice, and even hold it, without necessarily having done a thing toward preventing an ultimate Communist victory...
...At times we had to stand in line to catch helicopters to the continual battles...
...It is not within the scope of this article to discuss the reasons for Vietcong tenacity...
...it may be said of any of our past wars that the struggle was "80 per cent political, 20 per cent combat...
...He apparently wants a clinical, day-by-day account of the operations and movements of military units whether they make valid news or not...
...Vietnam is not unique...
...Dimensional coverage, Shaplen agrees, we are not getting...
...Yet the correspondent who commits himself to visit the troops risks being away from Saigon on the day the Vietcong blow up another American barracks, or Lyndon Johnson makes a pronouncement that stirs the Buddhists to riot, or the Vietnamese government collapses...
...Cosy figure...
...Other actions at that same period in August were covered with the same intensity...
...But then, they lack the luxury of gigantic stories like Normandy, where a newsman stood a great chance of being killed, but also had a monumental story to compensate for the risk...
...The AP casualties of three killed (staffers Huynh Thanh My, Bernard Kolen-berg, stringer Charles Chelappah) and seven wounded are, in terms of percentage, higher than the casualties suffered by regular army units...
...But it becomes less understandable, and even dangerous, when they wish it so strongly that they convince themselves (and others), in the face of all contrary evidence, by denying the relevance or importance of anything not within their professional scope and control...
...We of the writing press have no special magic...
...A perceptive Asian woman once told me: "You Americans are quick to tell us we must fight Communism because if we don't, the Communists will take away our freedom and our land...
...Most of them have adopted a guerrilla style of reporting: covering the front sporadically and failing to follow through on military operations to evaluate coherently their increasingly important achievements...
...Somewhere along the way in his star-studded career (see "Between Issues,' NL, October 10), the General must have forgotten about human emotions...
...While the allegation that "the overwhelming majority of correspondents do not get to the front" (a dependable old bell-ringer if ever there was one) serves as Marshall's launching pad, a re-definition of the reporter's function and an attempt to confine "the game" to areas in which the military mind is at ease, seem to be his destination...
...Military operations are vital, but they are consequential only as they relate to the complex of other problems that torture Vietnam: the urgent need for leadership in Saigon that can stir popular support...
...When Marshall, with his archaic romanticism toward war, looks beyond the battlefield he often becomes totally misleading...
...The North Korean Army was fairly well equipped and trained when it attacked the South in 1950, and it gained ground fast...
...But more important than this silliness about reporters failing to get into the field (with its implied charges of cowardice, fear and questionable manhood that put it on a level with dirty politics) is the distressing simpleness of Marshall's view toward the war...
...Even so, a million-man Red Chinese expeditionary force had to come in to pull the fat out of the fire for the Korean Communists...
...Although one cannot determine the accuracy of an article by an applause meter or a mail count, it is impertinent to dismiss such testimony both from those actively engaged in the war or about to be, and from those in the United States with a special interest in it...
...In conclusion, I might add that I was told of this practice by correspondents, not PIO officers...
...True, in Vietnam the political action is more bizarre and the flux much greater...
...My own observation of many Saigon briefings has been that the troublemakers are generally those who do gather the facts themselves and who do get about the country, while the "sit-in" most often writes his file straight from the handout and usually can be depended upon to echo the party line...
...Korea, for instance, is a nation with a population roughly comparable in size to that of North and South Vietnam...
...This has been accomplished despite 345,-000 American servicemen in Vietnam, the supporting groups in Thailand, the Seventh Fleet, the Air Force and South Vietnamese government forces totalling well over half a million men...
...Is life more pleasant for their families...
...Marshall imagines that this is merely another miniature World War II or Korea, and all we need are reporters with guts, like those who landed in the first waves at Anzio or Omaha Beach...
...In contrast to Korea, for example, there are no fronts or "campaigns...
...I think his charge is less than just to Horst Faas and Peter Arnett of the Associated Press, Morley Safer of CBS, Mert Perry of Newsweek, Larry Burrows of Life and many others for whom the sound and smell of battle is very real...
...But there, I am afraid, the common ground ends...
...If they play up blood and gore too much, as Marshall charges, the same complaint could be made against the TV cameramen who featured a few Negro teenagers in Watts shouting "burn whitey," thereby contributing significantly to the so-called white backlash...
...If one wants to play the statistical game, one might suggest the General do a little more research...
...So when the Buddhists or any other group becomes restive and launches anti-Government demonstrations, it is far more significant than just "sure-fire copy," as Marshall blithely terms it...
...This brings me to the more sober criticism of my friend Bob Shaplen, whose work as a war reporter I much respect...
...One four star general who commanded in Korea and now has two sons fighting in Vietnam, wrote to me: "The press coverage of the war is so weak that hard as I try I cannot understand what is happening to our troops over there...
...And some of us have been covering the Vietnam war almost from the beginning...
...A recent example of this was a letter to the New York Times from former Ambassador Frederick E. Nolting Jr., charging that a Times reporter was "prejudiced" because he implied that the Diem regime's elections were not honest-the same elections in which Madame Nhu regularly polled 98 per cent of the "vote...
...These are the factors that will determine the eventual outcome...
...I can only say that at the three I attended before giving up in disgust, the briefers were doing their best to communicate honestly with reporters who showed no inclination seriously to listen, though most of them had little knowledge or experience of their own...
...Of course it is essential to cover combat operations, particularly major actions, and to take risks to do so...
...But a good reporter knows how to work his way through all this to judgments that are vastly more useful to the thoughtful reader than blow-by-blow battle stories...
...Marshall says that in his eight weeks in the field he saw only three newsmen...
...Mission...
...As we see it, our job is not to polarize the national will around "this solid, shining and reassuring performance, if we were but permitted to view it" (Marshall's reference to the First Cavalry...
...It is less than useful to try to begin a reform movement with the exposed, frustrated newsmen in Vietnam...
...For a newsman trying to cover a situation as explosive, unpredictable and complicated as the struggle for Vietnam, the problem of how to deploy himself geographically every morning is both critical and extraordinarily difficult...
...I do not say that with a sneer...
...never been beaten into unconsciousness by rioters or police...
...From my own files, I could show him some rather complete and passably good accounts of the battle and its significance...
...What becomes sadly clear in reading Marshall is that his whole viewpoint is hopelessly parochial, even irrelevant...
...Marshall declares that correspondents freeload on the U.S...
...He might compare the casualty figures among correspondents in Vietnam since the American build-up with figures for a comparable period during the Korean War...
...One of the central points of the General's outburst is his contention that "the name of the game is Being With Troops" (his caps), which he accompanies with a hint that the newsmen in Vietnam avoid combat reporting because of cowardice-a low blow that is as unnecessary as it is inaccurate...
...But the combined Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces manage to keep going, holding their base areas fairly secure, making up their battle losses and continuing to inflict bloody attrition on their Saigon and American enemies...
...In my opinion, the Vietnamese war is extremely difficult to cover, far more so than World War II in the Pacific, the Korean War and other conflicts in my experience, including the Malayan "emergency" and the fight against the Hukbala-haps in the Philippines...
...To underline his point, General Marshall asserts that "any reporter can make a clean break from the sit-in posture by insisting that his post is forward and his professional integrity is at stake for his main chance to mature as a writer is certainly not in the noxious atmosphere of Saigon...
...Korea lasted three years and one month...
...The name of whose game...
...Marshall laments that the great deeds of the U.S...
...Despite two major breakthroughs by American military forces in the last 18 months, despite the radical transformation of the war, pitting line against line in main engagements slugged out at the closest range and relegating strictly guerrilla attacks to marginal importance, your correspondents and most of the press continue to represent the conflict as essentially a political and para-military problem...
...The newsmen in Vietnam are not all hard-driving men and women...
...At the time, they all seemed pretty big and important to us, and they did to our editors, too...
...At the same time, moreover, there has been some excellent reporting from Vietnam...
...It would be good to see a truce where each writer on Vietnam began tending his own garden and sticking to the business at hand- covering Vietnam...
...Did any of those battles secure any vital piece of real estate for one side or the other...
...General Marshall's assault on the American newsmen in Vietnam is so intemperate, and so weakened by errors of fact- for example, his surprising assertion that war reporters have never before had it so good-that it is difficult to comment constructively...
...The lopsidedness has been in excessive reportage about military operations, at the expense of penetrating week-by-week coverage of the state of the struggle as a whole, and of its wider implications...
...Most of all they came from a sense for news, and being in the right place at the right time...
...Battles" as such seldom take place-the big one in the Ia Drang valley a year ago, and Operation Hastings in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) recently, have been rare exceptions...
...I trust that General Marshall has not forgotten the atmosphere at the press billets in Seoul during the latter part of the Korean War...
...American newsmen were with General Khanh's forces there in early 1964, and during the bloody battle of February this year, when casualties on both sides were far higher than in the August fight...
...If these subjects are indeed negligible, the American press is failing Of course coverage of military operations is important...
...And despite the fine success of the First Cavalry (Air Mobile) up in the Ia Drang area last August, I would be delighted to buy both a drink and 10 gallons of gasoline for General Marshall if he would be willing to drive a jeep up that valley today without benefit of an escort of at least a regiment of troops...
...Unfortunately, it is likely that some of their thinking is reflected in his attack on the newsmen in Vietnam...
...The truly "mature" reporter is the man who can measure and assess them, and then tell his readers how the struggle is going in its entirety...
...It is preposterous to suggest that my viewpoint is warped by a purely military bias, or that I view combat as the only important aspect of war...
...Perhaps disenchantment with our personal heroes is inevitable...
...Nor is there anything exceptional about the newsmen's performance in Vietnam...
...The Vietnamese enemy obviously has something on the ball that earlier enemies of the United States have lacked...
...As in all wars, this one has also produced a crop of journalistic lightweights -a very small minority-who are more interested in their own heroic notices than in doing a competent job...
...The significance of this latter aspect would be hard to exaggerate...
...On a typical day AP will have one reporter and one photographer in the field with the U.S...
...Perhaps I will find out when I return to Vietnam later this month...
...The others were either struggling to get into action, or struggling to get out and file their daily stories...
...We stay in Vietnam because we think the story is important enough to justify the dangers involved in covering it...
...Despite Marshall, Alsop, Beech, Assistant Secretary of Defense Arthur Sylvester, Time magazine and some others, that is what the hard core of the Vietnam press corps has been doing all along...
...Numerous lead headlines were devoted to Paul Revere II, and AP daily war roundups, frequently featured on page one, were devoted to the operation on five occasions in August...
...Lack of depth is our weakness now...
...I recall that he was out for a week or so in 1962 with former CIA Chief Allen Dulles to investigate GI morale...
...Castan, who was a good friend of ours, did not come to Vietnam to die but to report on what is happening...
...In the course of several days briefing two brigades of soldiers on what to expect in Vietnam, I discovered that they had been currying the papers for weeks in search of coverage that might give them a feeling for what the war is like-only to draw a blank...
...There are few, if any, actions where a reporter's personal adventures add appreciably to what he can learn afterward by questioning the survivors, which he has to do anyway to find out what happened beyond his own foxhole- always assuming that his purpose is not a gee-whiz-I-was-there story...
...The quest for information is never satisfied by the rejoinder: "How can you say such things...
...Often on hunches, correspondents have ignored the official invitations to big, planned operations, say, by the First Cavalry Division out of An the, and instead have driven their own cars to some town in the Mekong River Delta or up to Hau Nghia Province to get in on a smaller operation...
...Referring to the wives, Marshall says, "any scolding of them [the cowards] would be invidious since I have no awareness of their personal problems-how their wives feel about danger and urge them to play it safe...
...We are trying to be better journalists, which is a harder task...
...It could lead to a new government-and who knows what the new men would do...
...the mounting inflation that drives the population to despair...
...As to the work of the combat correspondent I must say that it requires far less than the risk of any rifleman...
...Marshall leads off his article by stating that Operation Paul Revere II failed to rate one lead headline in the United States...
...This is not to suggest that the press has succeeded in Vietnam...
...Perhaps inadvertently, Marshall is unfair to individuals he does not know...
...The wire services routinely cover the major battle zones and have someone in the field all the time...
...He got the facts for his fine story by intelligent and thoughtful reporting after the fact-the same technique, incidentally, that he scorned when used by reporters at the battle of Tourmorong...
...If he had looked at the list, he would have found that a large percentage of these are messenger boys, office managers, etc., who have to be officially accredited because it is the only way to gain access to U.S...
...These are personal options, not necessities...
...But we are not trying to be better heroes or more swashbuckling personalities...
...But despite this, the combined enemy forces never swept the United Nations into the sea...
...Even the occasional visitor to Vietnam, like Arnaud de Borchgrave, may produce, as in Newsweek's account of the battle for Hill 400 a few weeks ago, some of the war's most graphic reporting...
...the psychological tendencies among the people for or against the Vietcong...
...We are there, as I understand it, to demonstrate that democracy is both as strong and less cruel than Communism...
...It is a fact that 52,000 Americans are killed each year in auto accidents, yet auto accidents generally are not frontpage news because they are too common to be news...
...from aging, we fear, on theirs...
...two are special writers from New York and Washington on six-month tours to handle the "big picture" stories, including frequent visits to field units...
...Probably the finest of this type in American journalistic history was Ernie Pyle...
...25th Division or the U.S...
...Many other newsmen also covered Paul Revere II...
...The Associated Press had five full-time staffers (Horst Faas, Rick Merron, Al Chang, Peter Arnett, Bob Ohman) covering Paul Revere II even before it began (from the time it was Paul Revere I) to the day it ended...
...We have seen visitors come and go...
...Two are Vietnamese employes whose job is to get exit visas...
...I used the word "faddishness" in my criticism and I use it again...
...Marshall's embarrassingly romantic and distorted view of the Vietnam war...
...Sadly, there is a kernel of truth in Marshall's charges...
...program...
...Marshall tells us he stayed in the II Corps zone because "it is self-defeating to attempt covering too much...
...Relatively speaking, the proportion of the people actually fighting is always very small...
...In a limited way, I agree...
...But I question-as indeed may Shaplen -any implication that former standards must be jettisoned and that balanced coverage, which would make understandable the operations of fighting forces, is either less essential or less attainable than before...
...But then, to Marshall, no doubt she is a faint-hearted bitch who has no conception of the Greater Glory to be won on the battlefield...
...During his recent stay in Vietnam, Marshall spent his time in the II Corps zone, an area that is least concerned with politico-social problems, least concerned with the peasants since there are so few there-in short, least representative of the Vietnam conflict...
...He must report what effect the war has on the people, the development of political parties, the economy and the delicate interplay between U.S...
...Too few newspapers take seriously the injunction that one does not send a boy to do a man's job...
...Those prizes did not result from the "cynical sit-in" approach Marshall charges, but from hard soldiering and good sense...
...I might note that when, as a civilian, I have criticized the establishment I served in uniform, I have always received a serious hearing...
...Marshall's comment that "there is a cynical faddishness to war reporting out of Vietnam" rings hollow for those who cover the war day after day, year after year...
...But the correspondent who depends on an invitation from some well-meaning public information officer will all too often wait in vain for a tip on an interesting engagement...
...The true challenge-and it is as tough as newsmen have ever had to face anywhere-lies in understanding and communicating to American readers what kind of a struggle this is...
...I've never been quite sure just what a "bleeding-heart" is supposed to be...
...The reality for a writer, however, is that there is little to be learned midst the shot and shell to justify the risk...
...The fact that he saw three newsmen did not mean only three newsmen were there...
...There has been surprisingly little copy from Saigon, for example, discussing what would happen to the South Vietnamese effort if the U.S...
...No one can deny that he is absolutely tops in covering military actions, explaining them and evoking the raw guts of men under stress...
...the corruption among local government officials that often undoes our military gains...
...This last category, reporters and columnists whose tour is a one or two week affair spent flitting about the country from one briefing to another (and in whose copy and columns are often planted officialdom's complaints about the regular press), is responsible for the huge turnover in the Saigon press corps: More than 1,100 accredited between lanuary 1 and the end of June, while the total monthly number remained near the 350 mark...
...But in Vietnam today it must take its proper role, not ignored or forgotten, but subordinate to the larger drama of a historic confrontation between warring nations and civilizations...
...The wife of one correspondent cries with fear when he goes into the field, and cries with relief when he returns...
...Not only are they too frightened to cover the war in the field, he says, but they cynically "sit around and sneer...
...I would only add that in some respects the war has been "over-covered," and this has perhaps confused the American public...
...There are also "draftees" in the news corps, some of whom are merely anxious to finish their tours as "volunteers" and return to domestic news assignments...
...Their primary motivation is survival...
...He might also, being an honest man, have to admit to making a specious, if all too common, identification: the lazy-cowardly with the sneering-cynical...
...To help the public answer this complex question, the reporter in Vietnam must judge everything happening in that country-not just military events-against the stated U.S...
...But it is also not the duty of the correspondent to look after the morale of the troops, or to provide images for the polarization of a national will, as Marshall suggests it should...
...This is the old, weary technique of the public figure who is caught with foot in mouth and then claims "I was misquoted,' to try to take advantage of the vulnerability of a $150-a-week reporter by discrediting him to his boss, the editor...
...In fact, because there have been so many young and inexperienced correspondents in Vietnam, they frequently try to outdo each other and win their spurs by playing "the game of Being With Troops," as General Marshall puts it...
...participation in land operations...
...At best, though, such trips can only be spot checks, since it is utterly impossible for a single newsman by himself to keep track of developments in a swiftly changing morass like Vietnam...
...Finally, the Vietnam war remains essentially a political one...
...never been chased through a score of blocks by mobs of homicidal teenagers and agitators armed with torches, bricks, machetes and iron pipes...
...Dozens of hard working correspondents spend weeks investigating, documenting and writing these "non-war" stories under the impression that there is more to Vietnam than the spit of bullets, and the victory cries or defeated wails of the belligerents...
...The earlier fighting around Bong Son, which Marshall mentions, received some excellent coverage too, and throughout the last several years I have witnessed many examples of fine reporting of everything from night patrolling to carrier warfare...
...The correspondent was referring to Frank McCulloch, head of the Time bureau, who spent two years doing a superb job of concentrating on military coverage in Vietnam before his transfer to Hong Kong...
...Bigart's brilliant work in Vietnam in 1962 involved a great deal of dangerous war coverage, but he was also one of the first to discover that Vietnam was not just another World War II or Korea...
...Maybe the General would say that their husbands were well insured...
...There is an understandable tendency among military men in Vietnam to wish that military activity were the only important element in the Vietnam story...
...Part of the response to my article is so mistaken about my viewpoint and so befogged with personal emotion as to prohibit a serious reply...
...From journalistic colleagues it is professional back stabbing-as contemptible in a newsman as it is in any other professional...
...Marshall's disgusting polemic, "Press Failure in Vietnam," is an insult to the memory of Bernie Kolenberg, Jerry Rose, Dickie Chapelle and Sam Castan-American reporters who died covering the Vietnam war...
...For him, an old soldier, it is the war, the blood and guts of battle, that is the story...
...If a reporter is lucky enough to witness some fighting after a day or two on patrols with the troops, chances are the incident will have little news value in these days when 10-13 U.S...
...For example, he says he "needed a double take" to be sure a young correspondent for a news magazine wasn't pulling his leg when he suggested that Marshall speak to his bureau chief in Hong Kong to find out "how the fighting [in Vietnam] was working out...
...The proposition that a newsman does not really understand what is going on unless he spends most of his time ducking shot and shell in the jungle is a cliche that has long been encouraged by television, Hollywood, and occasional newsmen themselves who like to play hero...
...But this is surely the function of the historian, not the reporter whose job is to slice through the mass of detail and routine and encapsulate the significance of events for a busy reader or viewer...
...None of us is the ultimate consumer, and when we become self-satisfied, freedom of the press can become frivolous self-indulgence...
...aid chiefs, the generals, the company commanders who have failed in Vietnam...
...Let the others keep pace if they can...
...The article does, however, suggest two useful rejoinders...
...It is not the fault of the officer, but of his superiors and of the communications system...
...It is well to look at perspectives...
...The remainder of the staff covers all aspects of Vietnam-the war, the riots, the politics, the people-in all their continuing complexity...
...Nance was wounded in the arm by shrapnel that same day...
...Marshall might be a little cynical himself so casually and callously to write off most correspondents in Vietnam (Except the three he named, one of them incorrectly...
...Arnett, Faas, Al Chang, Jim Pickerell, Dirck Halstead and many others have narrowly cheated death many a time at Ia Drang as well as elsewhere in the bleak border zone...
...The newsmen surely must accept some of the blame for the disconcerting fact (to old Vietnam hands in any case) that the average American citizen today continues to think that Vietnam is like other wars, with armies contesting real estate, and fails to understand the vital difference that the contest this time is for people, making obsolete most familiar criteria for measuring progress...
...Given this situation, the intelligent reporter will pace himself...
...Fortunately for America, this hard core is the leader in coverage...
...Whether they cannot make up their minds or were yessing me because they thought it the gentle thing to do, I am unable to say...
...Marshall says that's who the war is being covered for, and from his complaints I deduce them to be wishy-washy types who are squeamish about general slaughter, bombed villages, defoliated crops and a civilian-military casualty ratio of 10-1, and/or people who have questions about the moral and political validity of current American policy there...
...it hardly becomes newsmen writing of an embattled army of their own nation...
...one is the chief correspondent...
...This is particularly true for the television crews who are bringing home to Americans, with wonderful effectiveness, what it is like to fight a furtive, unseen enemy...
...I believe it is proper and fitting that the riots and demonstrations should be fully covered, as they have been, not because they are "sure fire copy," as Marshall says, but because they are a vital part of the whole picture...
...Jim Pickerell was in that hospital for two weeks after getting a bullet through his leg, and that runs into money for a freelance...
...Look back at the ambassadors, the U.S...
...There have been eyes blown out, hands permanently crippled (and for a cameraman, this is the end of a career), feet lamed by spike traps, ligaments and tendons wrecked by grenade and shell fragments, and countless bullet wounds...
...Naturally, good feature stories do occasionally result from small actions, and Marshall's account in the September issue of Harper's, "The Destruction of an American Platoon,' is an excellent example of how good they can be...
...By his own admission, Marshall stayed with it for three months, a short time considering the war has been going on since 1961...
...Are the feelings of the Vietnamese people merely tangential...
...But Vietnam is no quickie war like World War II or Korea...
...General Marshall's article has some of the same flavor...
...Incidentally, one of the reporters who did land at Anzio and a lot of other murderous beaches, Homer Bigart of the New York Times, has somewhat different views from Marshall...
...Yet it should be noted that the Harper's story was first rate largely because Sam Castan was killed while he was with the platoon...
...military offices and the airport...
...He says that this is a different kind of war, more complex than its predecessors, requiring broader coverage, and to a considerable extent I agree...
...This is not a war for real estate like World War II and Korea, and there is no front...
...Now, with the war still rolling on like the Mekong River, one begins to wonder...
...The difference between the reporter who has been in Vietnam five years and the one who has been there only about four months is essentially one of maturity and perspective...
...However, some of his points are well-taken, particularly his charge that much reporting of events in Vietnam has tended to be indiscriminate or has concentrated on the one-shot sensational story...
...The August Ia Drang fight was the latest in a continuing series...
...Something vile, I know...
...I share S.L.A...
...My contentions have been corroborated by letters from six generals, three leading veteran war correspondents recently in Vietnam, and four editors of national publications...
...But the readjustment actually made was entirely inadequate...
...Let us touch first on this matter of cowardice (and let the reader remember that many of us have had to fight for our lives to get out of Vietnam ambushes, and we have often had to act more like soldiers than newsmen...
...I take this position not as a professional military man but as a reporter, editorial writer and correspondent whose primary field has been not military policy but foreign affairs...
...But they are a primary concern for most of the veteran correspondents in Vietnam...
...Marshall spent about three months in Vietnam this past summer...
...Are we to assume, then, that in the General's view, search and destroy operation number one-hundred-and-so-and-so is an urgently important story, while an attempt (nearly successful) to topple the Ky government and possibly the entire U.S...
...Altogether the "press problem" in Saigon, as it is regularly described in the State Department, is a non-issue which contributes little but fog and bitterness to a situation that is already foggy and bitter enough...
...With the commitment of U.S...
...Contrary to what Marshall implies, however, it is not at all easy to find combat when American troops undertake literally thousands of small unit actions weekly...
...Fourth Division, plus possibly two covering the Vietnamese in the Mekong Delta...
...The General also infers cowardice in reporters who abruptly leave the "front," as he calls it, to cover political disturbances in Saigon...
...If Marshall had taken the trouble to investigate, he would have discovered that within the Associated Press, for example, there are 17 accredited newsmen...
...A division commander in Vietnam wrote that the main burden on the morale of his troops is the failure of the press to give their families a sense of the nature and import of their struggle...
...The sensible rule in combat is that one accepts the minimum risks one's task requires-neither more nor less...
...But in the long run the significance of the Buddhist riot Marshall dismisses so brusquely, or the Cabinet split caused by regionalism, or the disaffection stemming from American bombing of a friendly village, may be much more important to the course of the war than an individual military action...
...Indeed, he specifically reports that Captain Carpenter, the one-time "Lonesome End" at West Point, reacted in "complete disgust" to the way the newsmen swarmed around after he became a combat hero- which is not surprising in view of the fact that his courage had been publicly praised by the President of the United States...
...He wants newsmen to ignore these fascinating and significant areas and report only military actions-and apparently only those actions that the "simple souls" back home, to use his condescending phrase, will find stirringly patriotic...
...Our job is to report what is going on all over Vietnam...
...From the Pentagon or White House it is predictable...
...It is a highly sophisticated guerrilla war whose object is primarily political...
...I would say, too, that it is presumptuous for members of the press to assert they are reporting a great national undertaking, such as a war, in the best possible way...
...For the correspondents there is little "hard" copy...
...servicemen are killed daily...
...For every operation that flushes a fight with the elusive Vietcong, there are a dozen that produce nothing but leeches, and platitudinous stories about GI's itching for a fight...
...Marshall's criticisms are not the first, nor will they be the last...
...The reporters hiked across the Chu Pong mountains with the soldiers, waded through flooded jungle streams and slept in foxholes...
Vol. 49 • November 1966 • No. 23
