![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
Previous attempts to understand press coverage of protests against the Vietnam War have either emphasized the struggle for self-definition that protesters were confronted with as a result of a dominant press presentation or have noted the press reversion to long-established models to explain this new phenomenon. In turn protesters were usually hostile to the press both because they felt they were misrepresented and because the press appeared to be yet another representative aspect of capitalist hegemony. Yet the relationship between the press and protesters was in many ways a symbiotic one.
Keywords:
Acknowledgements
The staff of the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick have, as ever, been very supportive. Professor John Young has provided essential advice, while comments from colleagues in the School of History at the University of Nottingham have been consistently constructive. The students of my special subject, The 1960s and the West, have always provided stimulating discussion. Thanks are also due to Professor Kevin Ruane for his patience and advice, and to the anonymous readers for their constructive suggestions.
Notes
[1] CitationHilwig, ‘The Revolt Against the Establishment: Students Versus the Press in West Germany and Italy’, 330.
[2] See CitationKraushaar, 1968, 38 and 50 and Christel Dietze, ‘Tribun vorm Tribunal: Hearing über den Springer-Konzern’, FU Spiegel, February 1968, 17, Sammlung Schwiedzrik, Zsg 153/36, Bundesarchiv Koblenz. FU Spiegel was the student newspaper at the Free University Berlin. See also CitationThomas, Protest Movements in 1960s West Germany, 74 and 167.
[3] CitationGitlin, Whole World, 17. CitationAnderson, The Movement, xiii–xiv also gives a useful survey of the politicized nature of both contemporary and subsequent accounts of the protests in America. In particular Anderson notes the preponderance of polarized extremes in the representation of protests as completely good or completely bad.
[4] Gitlin, Whole World, 27–8.
[5] Gitlin, Whole World, 27–8, 3.
[6] See for instance, CitationWober, ‘Cultural Indicators: European Reflections on a Research Paradigm’, 61–2.
[7] Gitlin, Whole World, 119.
[8] CitationHallin, The ‘Uncensored War’, 8.
[9] CitationHallin, The ‘Uncensored War’, 8, 194. Hallin's italics.
[10] CitationSmall, Antiwarriors, 27 and 35. These ideas also inform Small's earlier work, CitationSmall, Covering Dissent, 2, 13–14 and 23–5. CitationIsserman and Kazin, America Divided, 183 also emphasize the moderate nature of most protesters.
[11] CitationEllis, ‘A Demonstration of British Good Sense?’ British Student Protest During the Vietnam War', 67–8.
[12] CitationMarwick, The Sixties, 634.
[13] CitationFraser, 1968.
[14] CitationDonnelly, Sixties Britain, 149.
[15] CitationMurdock, ‘Political Deviance: The Press Presentation of a Militant Mass Demonstration’, 209. For the study on which Murdock's conclusions are based see CitationHalloran, Elliott and Murdock, Demonstrations and Communications.
[16] See the ‘Students in Revolt’ series of articles in The Times from 27 May 1968 to 1 June 1968.
[17] ‘US Musters Big Guns for Teach-in’, Guardian, 16 June 1965, 1.
[18] Daily Mail, 16 June 1965, 14 and 17 June 1965, 16.
[19] ‘Dons, Students and Politicians Wage Vietnam War of Words’, The Times, 17 June 1965, 8.
[20] Fraser, 1968, 129.
[21] Sanity, July 1965, p. 8, MSS 181, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick (henceforth MRC).
[22] Boston, Richard, ‘Angry Enough About Vietnam’, New Society, 6 July 1967, 22.
[23] CitationTaylor and Pritchard, The Protest Makers, 46–7. Their italics.
[24] CitationTaylor and Pritchard, The Protest Makers, 46–7. Their italics These findings conform to those found in a number of surveys. See, for instance, CitationBlackstone, Gales, Hadley and Lewis, Students in Conflict for a detailed survey of student opinion at the 1967 LSE sit-in where support for the sit-in and various other issues, including the Vietnam campaign, crossed party lines, but was found to be more pronounced on the left of the political spectrum.
[25] ‘Vietnam Solidarity Campaign Activities: Easter Demonstration’, VSC Bulletin, April 1967, 1, J. Askin Collection, MSS 189/V, MRC.
[26] VSC Bulletin, July–August 1967, 1, R. Purdie Collection, MSS 149, box 5, file 2, MRC.
[27] CitationAldgate, ‘The Newsreels, Public Order and the Projection of Britain’, 146–7.
[28] CitationChibnall, Law and Order News, 90.
[29] ‘The British Student: Democrat or Layabout?’, Guardian, 7 March 1968, 7.
[30] Untitled article, Sun, 18 March 1968, 14.
[31] ‘Editorial – Violent Protest’, The Times, 19 March 1968, 9.
[32] ‘300 Arrested After Vietnam Protest’, Guardian, 18 March 1968, 1.
[33] ‘Charging in W1’, Daily Express, 18 March 1968, 1.
[34] Daily Mail, 19 March 1968, 6.
[35] Daily Telegraph, 19 March 1968, 16.
[36] ‘The Student Press Replies’, Union News, 15 March 1968, 1. Union News was the student union newspaper at the University of Leeds.
[37] New Society, 16 May 1968, 699; Guardian, 3 April 1968, 8.
[38] Guardian, 27 May 1968, 8.
[39] Sun, 19 March 1968, 16.
[40] CitationAli, Street Fighting Years, 177.
[41] ‘Tariq Ali Warning of Raid on Court’, The Times, 14 June 1968, 1.
[42] Holt, Marjorie, ‘The “Punch Up” or The Pattern of Protest’, VSC Bulletin, April 1968, 5, R. Purdie Collection, MSS 149, box 5, file 2, MRC.
[43] David Triesman, ‘Essex’, New Left Review, 50, 1968, 70–71.
[44] See for instance Thomas, Protest Movements, 148–54 on discussions about revolutionary violence and provocation in West Germany.
[45] Union News, 9 October 1968, 5.
[46] Ali, Street Fighting Years, 217–18.
[47] ‘Militant Plot Feared in London’, The Times, 5 September 1968, 1.
[48] ‘The Sun Says – Impudent Warning’, Sun, 3 October 1968, 3.
[49] Ali, Street Fighting Years, 216.
[50] ‘Editorial – Students and the Day’, Daily Telegraph, 18 October 1968, 18.
[51] The Times, 15 October 1968, 1.
[52] Daily Telegraph, 26 October 1968, 12. See also the leader on the front page.
[53] ‘The Street is Our Medium’, The Black Dwarf, 27 October 1968, 2.
[54] ‘Callaghan Faces Plot Questions’, The Times, 6 September 1968, 1.
[55] ‘Police Attack Vietnam Day Publicity’, The Times, 8 October 1968, 3.
[56] ‘Lacking in Participation’, Guild Gazette, 15 October 1968, 3. This was the University of Liverpool student union newspaper.
[57] CitationJohnson, The Vantage Point, 384. Nixon quoted in CitationHammond, Reporting Vietnam, 293.
[58] CitationOberdorfer, Tet!, 333. For a more recent discussion in which the influence of the media upon public opinion is forcefully asserted, see CitationCulbert, ‘Television's Visual Impact on Decision-Making in the USA, 1968: The Tet Offensive and Chicago's Democratic National Convention’, 430 and 437 in particular.
[59] Hallin, The ‘Uncensored War’, 9 and 168–73.
[60] Hammond, Reporting Vietnam, 295. See also Daniels, Year of the Heroic Guerrilla, 32–3.
[61] CitationBuzzanco, Vietnam, 134, CitationDeBenedetti, An American Ordeal, 357, Fraser, 1968, 353–4.
[62] Hallin, ‘Uncensored War’, 168–9 and 182.
[63] CitationPage, US Official Propaganda During the Vietnam War, 222. See also CitationWybrow, Britain Speaks Out, 88.
[64] Gallup Political Index, Report 98, June 1968, 66.
[65] CitationDickinson, Harindrath and Linné, Approaches to Audiences, xiii–xiv and CitationMurdock, ‘Mass Communication and the Construction of Meaning’, 208 and 210–11.
[66] CitationMausbach, ‘“Burn, ware-house, burn!” Modernity, Counterculture, and the Vietnam War in West Germany’, 191.
[67] ‘The Shouting Dies’, The Times, 28 October 1968, 9.
[68] ‘Letters to the Editor’, The Times, 30 October 1968, 9
[69] ‘What Went Wrong?’, International Times, 15–18 November 1968, 4.
[70] ‘Editorial: Publicity for the Demo’, Guardian, 29 October 1968, 10.
[71] Fraser, 1968, 279–80.
[72] ‘Editorial’, VSC Bulletin, 19 November 1968, 1, R. Purdie Collection, MSS 149, box 5, file 2, MRC.
[73] Marwick, The Sixties, 13–14.
[74] Buzzanco, Vietnam, 110.
[75] ‘Editorial: Publicity for the Demo’, Guardian, 29 October 1968, 10.