There was no, repeat NO government censorship during Vietnam. What there was, was video. 90% of the evening "news," was video coverage of the war there and protests here. The coverage pushed the pro-communist line that the war was lost ... that we were losing ... our casualties were too high ... our allies were corrupt, etc. etc.
This began when JFK was President and he himself turned against the war. It was never told to the American TV news audience that JFK promoted escalation of the Vietnam War against the advice of BOTH Eisenhower and MacArthur. Naturally, the MSM that adored JFK turned against it with him. Voilà. The anti-war movement was born. LBJ inherited JFK's team ... who had already turned against the war ... and he escalated the war further, even as highly placed people in his administration escalated their secret support for the anti-war movement (e.g., Bill Moyers). Korea. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Lives wasted. What the soldiers win, the politicians give away.
“This began when JFK was President and he himself turned against the war.”
Are you sure about this?
There was no American ground war during Kennedy’s presidency. He had 15,000 military ‘advisors’ in RSVN but no ground combat troops. Whatever contact occurred between Americans and the communist insurgents was very limited. I’m real familiar with this because my father was one of those 15,000 advisors.
Kennedy not only didn’t remove us from RSVN he got us increasingly enmeshed there. By 1963 Kennedy had become dissatisfied with President Ngo Dinh Diem, finding Diem to be an impediment to Kennedy’s designs for South Vietnam.
Our ambassador, Frederick Nolting, was recalled by JFK and replaced by Henry Cabot Lodge. Kennedy recalled Nolting because Nolting was very close to Diem and wouldn’t want to go along with what Kennedy had planned.
That plan was to stage a coup and remove Diem, replacing him with someone more compliant. The order to do this originated with Averill Harriman and was carried out by Lodge’s military assistant. Lodge let the South Vietnamese generals know that we would support a coup.
On November 1, 1963 Diem and his brother were murdered, leaving South Vietnam’s government chaotic and rudderless, a situation that would last for years. And of course 21 days later Kennedy himself was assassinated, leaving Johnson to inherit the mess that the Kennedy brain trust had created. Johnson of course made this worse by sending in ground combat troops while simultaneously handicapping them with no plan for defeating North Vietnam.