Some holiday viewing! Vietnam, the television war

Image above: Episodes from the series Vietnam: A Television History on YouTube.

The power of Television

It is often said that the Vietnam War was the first television war - it was televised into our lounge rooms and for the first time the community, young and old could see what war was really about. As a result, there was considerable resistance from sections of the community as the war dragged on and the images of suffering and death continued to be seen on television screens in Australia. Interestingly, no war since Vietnam has had the same coverage in so much detail. Compared to the censorship in other wars, including World War 1, the coverage was extensive and very real. It is worth reading the writings and viewing the photojournalism of famous Vietnam war photographers such as the Australian Neil Davis  to get an idea about how close the coverage was to the real action.

As a result of the images captured and stories told about the war, the home front was informed about the nature of war more than ever before.  I wonder if World War 1 and World War 2 would have played out differently if we had television when they occurred?
I really recommend you view on YouTube the excellent BBC documentary on the Vietnam War. This documentary provides great information and images to really make us think about their impact at the time.

There are many great documentaries on Vietnam for you to look at and consider - some quite controversial as we continue to the write the history of the Vietnam War. 

For those of you who really want to immerse yourself in the Vietnam War (and have Netflix), the series called  The Vietnam War: A Film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick  is pretty amazing. To watch it all is a bit of a marathon (10 episodes @ 1 hour 20 minutes) and very intense but a wonderful documentary of the events and things we will talk about and see in Vietnam. A big ask to watch it all but worth a look if you have Netflix.