Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [240]
Braestrup states that “the embassy fight became the whole Tet offensive on TV and in the newspapers during that offensive’s second day” (his emphasis; I, 126); this illustration of the incompetence of the media is thoroughly refuted by his story index. He also claims that the media exaggerated VC success in the early confusion by claiming that the embassy had been entered—failing, however, to compare these accounts with the reports by military police that they were taking fire from inside the embassy, or the message log of the 716th MP Battalion, which reads: “General Westmoreland calls; orders first priority effort to recapture U.S. Embassy” (I, 92; our emphasis). It is intriguing to read Braestrup’s outrage over quite accurate press reporting of what was said by Westmoreland, military police involved in the fight, and others, and in particular over the fact that the press did not simply rely on Westmoreland’s later account (his apparent belief that the embassy had been “captured” goes beyond any reporter’s error that Braestrup cites). A careful reading shows that media reports were surprisingly accurate, given the confusion of the moment, although one cannot fault Braestrup’s profound conclusion that “first reports are always partly wrong,” which will come as a startling insight to the working journalist.
Repeatedly, the study claims that the media were “vengeful” or bent on “retribution” in reacting skeptically to government claims. An alternative possibility is that this reaction reflected a newfound realism. Braestrup agrees, for example, that “Westmoreland was wrong in publicly underestimating (in November [1967]) the enemy” (I, 69), and cites many other false and misleading optimistic statements, among them Robert Komer’s prediction of “steady progress in pacification” a week before the Tet offensive (I, 72; Braestrup’s paraphrase). In fact, part of the shock of the Tet offensive resulted from the faith of the media in previous government assessments, undermined by the Tet offensive, as the U.S. military and official Washington were well aware.
Furthermore, General Westmoreland’s accounts were hardly persuasive during the offensive. Thus he claimed that “all 11 of the Vietnamese division commanders . . . commanded their units effectively,” whereas, as a journalist learned, one “had gone into a state of shock during the Tet attacks” (I, 454–55). Or consider Westmoreland’s claim that allegations about inaccuracy and inflation of body counts were “one of the great distortions of the war” by the media—there were at most “relatively small inaccuracies” (II, 163). His own generals had a rather different view. In his study of the opinions of the generals. General Douglas Kinnard reports that 61 percent of those responding describe the body count as “often inflated,” and only 26 percent “within reason accurate.” The responses include: “a fake—totally worthless,” “often blatant lies,” “a blot on the honor of the Army,” and “grossly exaggerated by many units primarily because of the incredible interest shown by people like McNamara and Westmoreland.” Perhaps journalists had some reason for skepticism, apart from “vengefulness.”9
To demonstrate the absurd extent of press efforts to find shock value, Braestrup cites a story in Time on enemy tunneling at Khe Sanh, “as occurred around Dienbienphu” (I, 435; his emphasis), in general ridiculing the analogy—but forgetting to ridicule the remark by Marine Commander General Cushman, who said that “He is digging trenches and doing other tricks of the trade which he learned to do at Dienbienphu” (I, 403).
“All Vietnam, it appeared on film at home, was in flames or being battered into ruins, and all Vietnamese civilians were homeless refugees,” Braestrup alleges (I, 234), in typically fanciful rhetoric, adding that “there were virtually no films shown or photographs published during