Vietnam and the Media, from the archives of Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform
Part 2 of a 10-part series. By Leonard Magruder, President
PART 2 - The suppression of the final report to the American people
from
the nation’s largest symposium on Vietnam at Stony Brook University, N.Y.
In part 1 of this series on how the media suppressed stories related to Vietnam, Mr. Magruder recounted how Dan Rather refused an invitation to debate the many issues with regard the performance of the media during the Vietnam War at the Stony Brook University Vietnam Symposium of 1986.
“The media pretty well snubbed the entire event,” said Mr. Magruder, who served as National Coordinator, “and when I sent out a final press release summarizing the findings of the Symposium, the largest ever held, it was completely ignored by the New York national media.”
Following are extracts from that press release:
“The key to the success of the Symposium was that for the first time hundreds of Vietnam veterans and students had been brought together in a direct learning situation, stimulated by an outstanding panel of speakers, 60 in all, from all over the country representing the military, the media, the government, veterans organizations, academia, and the war protestors.Funding for the project came from private individuals. Over $35,000 was raised for honorariums and speaker fees.
Each session of the Symposium, most with a number of speakers, covered a different topic related to the Vietnam War. These included:
In general, said Mr. Magruder in an interview, representatives of the military and government were not only highly responsive to invitations to participate, but all had given of their time at no cost. Most former war protestors who were invited, he said, either declined the invitations or had asked for fees which were in many cases prohibitive. The representatives of the national media who were invited, such as Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, Tom Brokaw, Sam Donaldson, Peter Jennings, and Ted Koppel, did not respond, making the media singularly underrepresented.
Aspects of the war that had been neglected over the years, but had been brought out by the speakers at the Symposium, included: the humanitarian and idealistic dimensions of American involvement, the subversive aspects of the campus “peace” movement, the true intentions of Communist North Vietnam to conquer all of Indochina, the ruthlessness and barbaric tactics of the Viet Cong, the use of the American media to influence public opinion against the war, the succumbing of American journalists and intellectuals to Hanoi propaganda, the bravery and victorious record of the American soldier, the genuine thrust for freedom of the South Vietnamese, the abandonment by liberals in Congress of South Vietnam, the views of the Vietnam veteran towards the war protestors and the media, and the true status of the POW/MIA issue.
Asked what he thought were the main themes emerging from the Symposium, Mr. Magruder said that while he could not speak for either Dr. Kennedy or the Vietnam veterans, that as a psychologist and sociologist the themes that he saw emerging from the Symposium seemed to include at least the following five points:
2) The majority of veterans do not view the war protestors as having been either “idealistic” or as “moral heroes,” and view their interpretation of the war as naïve, false, and damaging to their efforts. Most of them recognize that the war protests were engineered by Marxist and other ideologues on campus who were partisan to Hanoi and manipulated gullible students to further the self-interests of both groups.
3) Most veterans expressed concern over the fact that many former draft evaders and war protestors now occupy prominent positions on campus and continue in their writings and lectures to perpetuate a false understanding of the war and its veterans offering themselves to students as a “moral elite,” while in general striving to avoid debate on the issues with the veterans.
4) A majority of veterans appear to be deeply dissatisfied with the media, particularly national television, for having portrayed a view of the war more sympathetic to that of the war protestors than to the majority of Americans including themselves. They are particularly unhappy that their considerable military achievements such as at Hue, Khe Sahn and other battlefields during the Tet and other large offensives were portrayed by the media to the American people either negatively, or as defeats, and that these impressions have never been corrected.
5) A majority of veterans appear to hold the campus and the media largely responsible for the tragic outcome of the war, and blame those two institutions for having created a false image of them and the war that made their return home very difficult.
Asked what he thought was the most significant contribution of the Symposium, Mr. Magruder said that it was undoubtedly the changing perception by students of the Vietnam veterans from the false stereotypes of the anti-war movement and the media, to one of citizens who had acted responsibly in answering the call to duty, who successfully fought an especially difficult war to a peace treaty, and who had returned home to totally unfair treatment as a result of misinformation spread by the campus and the media.
Equally important, he said, was the change that is coming about in student perception of the war protestors and the draft dodgers as considerably less than the moral heroes they portray themselves to be, as a result of becoming aware, at the Symposium, of the ideological and often self-interested motives behind their behavior.
Asked about the problems the symposium had faced, Mr. Magruder said that the biggest problem was that media coverage had been scanty and biased. What little there had been focused primarily on General Westmoreland’s visit, and the three articles on this in the campus newspaper had been unduly critical and harsh, causing some veterans to observe that many on campus, and in the media, seemed to be trying to avoid the issues.
Also, he said, there had been some harassment by the leftists and Marxists on campus. One professor, a well-known leftist, gave a lengthy speech on the “vested economic interests” behind the war (an idea universally hooted down by the veterans), had coached his students into giving him a standing ovation, had encouraged his students to heckle others on stage, and had lodged a complaint with the Dean about the presence on campus of the American flag in a color guard to honor General Westmoreland.
Mr. Magruder is President of Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform, the national organization and the student auxiliary at the Univ. of Kansas. Speaking in Lawrence today, he said, “Looking back, it borders on a national tragedy that an event of this scope, made possible by the contributions, in terms of time, effort, and money, of so many, and designed to help the American people arrive at some correct historical conclusions with regards the war, was so neglected by the media, as well as by many on the University faculty, who largely shunned the event.
Significant new insights on the Vietnam Era by General Westmoreland, David Horowitz, Sen. Eugene McCarthy, Bobby Seale, and Al Santoli and so many others went totally unreported by the media, nor would they send representatives to engage in the dialogue. Nor has much changed. I noted yesterday a recent article by Richard Kolb, Editor-in-Chief of VFW Magazine in which he quotes Vietnam vet Milt Copulos as saying “There’s a wall 10 miles high and 50 miles thick between those of us who went and those who didn’t, and that wall is never going to come down.” And vet David Carrad, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “Until my generation passes from the scene, I doubt there will ever be any reconciliation of views on the war between those who went and those who did not.” It is the guilt of those who didn’t go that will always cause any effort to heal in a Symposium to be less than successful. For thirty years, the tissue of lies that had to be told by those who would not serve has been rotting the heart out of this society. Look at the experience of David Horowitz at Brown and Arizona State. The spirit of the leftist thugs of the 60’s is still with us. For 30 years the university has been unable to tolerate a dissenting opinion, or discuss an issue rationally, continuing to serve as the Depositer of the Lies or as Paul Hollander, noted sociologist at U. Mass. writes, “the major reservoirs of the adversary culture.” Why don’t our universities finally face the truth about Vietnam, rejoin and help our failing society?”
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Reprint with permission of Leonard Magruder. Founder/President, V.V.A.R.
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