20 years ago in South Vietnam

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 26

20 years ago in South Vietnam

Vietnam: 4 Reporter’s War. By Hugh Lunn. University of Queensland Press, 1987. 259 pp. Illustrations. $17.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Bruce Rennie) The struggle for South Vietnam in the 1960 s was the most heavily reported conflict (short of world war) in the history of warfare. On the American side, it was also, without qualification, the most freely reported war ever. The access the United States forces gave to accredited journalists (and getting accreditation was absurdly easy) was quite extraordinary. Hugh Lunn, who was a Reuter’s correspondent in South Vietnam for a year in 1967-68, found out long after the war was over that one journalist working at the time for one of the American weeklies, who had access to all the highest generals in the South Vietnamese and United States armed forces and to the highest embassy and intelligence officials, was a Viet Cong official. All journalists properly accredited by JUSPAO (one of the American military’s beloved acronyms — the Joint United States Public Affairs Office) were issued with a card which gave them access to military food (for which they had to pay) and military transport (which was free) with a priority of three. With this card hundreds of journalists at various times whizzed round all parts of South Vietnam with the same priority accorded a full coloneL This journalistic access has given rise to the furious debate that rages still: did the media somehow lose the war for the United States? Did inaccurate, false, negative reporting destroy civilian support and political support for a war that was otherwise winnable? The access was not granted out of any altruistic motive — the Americans thought that they would get the best coverage by allowing it. Hugh Lunn records that one of the American military briefers told him that at the start of the war the army was given the option to permit or deny independent press coverage. “Knowing what we know now,” he said, "we should have taken no reporters.” No explanation is given, but it looks suspiciously like the old case of blaming the messenger for the bad news he was bearing. The implication

is that somehow defeats can be turned into victories if they are reported differently, or not reported at all. It is important to remember that until late 1967, after American involvement in the war had been building up over five years, most journalists supported the war. Even then the doubts that some began to feel about it were expressed only in the most circumspect way. Hugh Lunn records his admiration for one of the journalists, the tall, silvery haired, respectable-looking Jim Tuohy, of the "Los Angeles Times.” Tuohy’s reporting of the war was so carefully balanced and his views so muted, says Lunn, that after nearly a year he still did not know what he thought about how the war was going. Then, in the second half of 1967, Tuohy wrote a piece that perhaps captures the essence of the war at that time and many war correspondents’ feelings about it: “The press says it is on the spot and the Government is not. Government officials say the press feels the war is being lost because they see only small pinpricks of the war while the Government has the over-all situation at its fingertips and can see the big picture. But there are many who are starting to believe the big picture is dangerously out of focus.” The Tet offensive in February, 1968, shattered any remaining complacency about the progress of the war. After years of continual military assertions that larger and larger areas of South Vietnam were being won from the guerrillas and North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong were able to mount largescale attacks that briefly won control of the old capital of Hue and parts of Saigon, including the United States Embassy. Militarily, the battle was a heavy defeat for the Viet Cong. They lost, it was much later learned, 50 per cent of their forces and the uprising they hoped would occur among the local people to support them never eventuated. The attack, about which the South Vietnamese and American forces appear to have received no warning, severely damaged morale. An English journalist wrote not long afterwards: “It was as though an army of Picts, all covered in blue woad, had marched down the Ml on London and no-one

had raised the alarm." Journalists certainly took quite extraordinary risks to see what they were writing about. The United States had a huge public-relations apparatus: every unit had its own publicity men and a barrage of material was pumped out at daily press briefings. But many journalists preferred to see for themselves and, using their JUSPAO travel authority, went to where the fighting was the most hazardous. One wonders why they did it. It certainly wasn’t just for the money, at least not for an agency journalist like Hugh Lunn. He got SUSI9O a week. One might think that there was some macho posturing about it, and to some extent that appears to have been true, but one of the most reckless Lunn writes about was a French woman photographer, Cathy Leroy, whose injuries after she was badly shot up on one occasion meant she had to carry baby food to eat because she couldn’t chew ordinary food. In all 45 journalists were killed in South Vietnam, and 18 are still missing. This compares with three dead in the Korean War and 39 for the whole of World War 11. There are easier ways to misreport a war. Hugh Lunn, as he describes it in this memoir of his year or so in South Vietnam, took many of the risks, but is guilty of none of the posturing. His accounts of being under fire — he flew into the middle of several battles and was caught in the Tet offensive in his last week in Saigon — emphasises the. fear of it, the danger, the helplessness he felt. (He was better informed, apparently, than the Americans. He heard — from a Vietnamese journalist in his office who heard it in turn from the journalist who later turned out to be a Viet Cong — that the Tet attack was about to begin several hours before it occurred).

He writes admiringly of a close friend: “He was not phoney-tough like some reporters.” The same could be said of Lunn himself. He arrived in Saigon young and inexperienced, but able to learn from some fine colleagues. He has repaid the debt in this superbly written account of them and himself at that turning point in the war. “Vietnam: A Reporter’s War” is cool, balanced, honest. A splendid book.