In Khe Sanh, journalists created the "Dien Bien Phu syndrome ”, constantly predicting a terrible fate for the garrison of American Marines and South Vietnamese Rangers; they even accused the American command of staying there and fighting there! In reality, at Khe Sanh, 6,000 American and South Vietnamese troops only sixtieth of the total combat strength available to Westmoreland held 20,000 North Vietnamese at bay. But the journalists persisted in asserting that the enemy had succeeded in immobilizing considerable American forces, forgetting to notice that these 20,000 North Vietnamese could have helped the Communist cause much more usefully in the cities...
Journalists objected to official statements announcing the defeat of the Communists, arguing that even if the thing were true (which they refused to admit, just as they refused to accept the official figure of the losses enemies), the Communists had in any case won a psychological victory. Unable to speak the language of the South Vietnamese, some reporters supported their theses by "psycho-analyzing" the people and revealing their alleged disenchantment with a government unable to protect them... And, although they were unable to assess the effects of the Tet offensive on the pacification program in the country, other journalists did not hesitate to assert that the pacification was "in tatters", "irreparably", and even—with what exaggeration! —that pacification had been “killed outright.”
And yet even then, as opinion polls were to show, far from making the mass of the American people hostile to the war, these reports rallied her to President Johnson. It was only when the latter refrained from taking vigorous reprisals against the Communists that many Americans turned away from them!
The action of the media had above all the effect among junior civil servants and among Washington's presidential advisers. The "hawks" of Congress fell silent, while the "doves" cooed louder and louder! Many civil servants reacted like this special adviser to the President who noted that whenever he saw official cables from Saigon, he found them "almost hallucinatory" compared to what he had seen on television the day before. evening.
The Roman Empire is the period of ancient history during which the Roman state and the overseas provinces were under the sovereignty of a princeps (emperor). It begins when Octavian received the title of Augustus in 27 BC. AD and traditionally ends, for its western part, in 476 AD. At its height, th