Mylai
Kenneth  J. Wolverton's  last assignment in the journalism department , University of Arizona, 2004.
  
INTRODUCTION
 
This report  will attempt to demonstrate how the press was partially responsible for a War  Crime in 1968 through Bias and also how the press helped keep it a secret for 19  months by failing to have Substantial Completeness in reporting the war.
We will  examine the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968 during the  Vietnam Conflict and  how it was eventually uncovered and reported by the press.
In the  particular problem of the My Lai Massacre, it will be shown that the ideals of  journalism were not only abused, but what can only be defined as manipulation  and bias (c/n1a) which translate as lies were passed on by the media as truth.
Bias and  Substantial Completeness are the focus of this report, but news coming from any  war often fails at accuracy and objectivity also because of  eminent danger,  chaos, and security while  the war correspondent or imbedded reporter has  limited access to all levels of operation. (c/n 1b). This report will primarily  center on historical analysis.
The report is  cited through various online and microfilm contemporary newspaper articles,  information drawn from seven books and supporting facts from various websites.
In conclusion  we will look into the factors of situation, structure and culture and how they  may have influenced the news. We will examine what manipulation may have taken  place and what the revelation of truth finally brought to the conduct of the  Vietnam War, and see if any reporter succeeded where others had failed.
 
BACKGROUND
 
The criteria  of this report is in the form of an historical analysis, in chronological order  of the My Lai Massacre, March 16, 1968. However there are references that  predate this period to show context of substantial completeness  in reporting  the war.
For a news  story to be credible, a journalist must be without Bias and have Substantial  Completeness as an intrinsic element. These two terms defined are,
Bias: a distorted and unfair judgment or disposition caused by values of a  reporter, photographer, editor, or institutionï¿½it is not just a distorted  presentation.
 
Substantial Completeness: Providing the reasonable reader with enough  information to make informed judgments about causes, consequences and policy  alternatives regarding events and issues (c/n-2).
 
In the  situation of 1968, America was in the midst of what was to be one of its  darkness moments as a country and as the leading democratic nation. The lack of  Substantial Completeness in the press was at the center  of the problem.  Throughout 1968 events begin to turn the attitude of the American people against  what was not called ï¿½warï¿½ but the Vietnam Conflict.  As stated on a High School  website,
American involvement in the Vietnam Conflict was one of the most controversial  events to take place during the late 20th century in the United Statesï¿½many  American lives were lost to fight the spread of communism and preserve a  peoples' right to choose their leaders.(ï¿½Conflictï¿½).
 
Below are a  few historic points of 1968:
January - Beginning of the siege of Khe Sanh; beginning of the Tet offensive
February - General Westmoreland requests an additional    206,000 troops over current 535,000; request refused
March 16 - My Lai massacre by U.S. troops
March 31 - President announces limited bombing halt over Northern Vietnam (coincides    with Johnson's decision not to run for president)
April 4 - Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated
October - U.S./D.R.V. meet in Paris for peace talks
November - Richard Nixon elected President, (ï¿½Timelineï¿½).
 
The above  timeline is accurate but the My Lai Massacre would not be revealed to the  American public until 19 months after it occurred, Sept. 5, 1969 (Hersh -128).
The Situation of 1968
It is little  exaggeration to say in 1968 that the world was in turmoil (SFE-1). ï¿½During the  Vietnam war, the body count was served up every day on the evening news. While  Americans ate dinner, they watched a graphic visual scorecard: how many  Americans had died that day, how many South Vietnamese and how many Communists.ï¿½  (ï¿½Body Countï¿½). The body count was often expressed like scores in a football  game. There was a general distortion of the war in part because of defensive  patriotism and fear of Communism, known as the ï¿½Domino Theory+.  The military  and political  attitude of warfare permeated the press. It was a fear of a  Communist takeover. It was casually referred to  as the ï¿½Domino Theory.ï¿½  As  defined in the encyclopedia it is,
Domino Theory:  The notion that if one country becomes Communist, other nations in the region  will probably follow, like dominoes falling in a line. The analogy, first  applied (1954) to Southeast Asia by President Dwight Eisenhower, was adopted in  the 1960s by supporters of the U.S. role in the Vietnam War. (ï¿½Dominoï¿½).
 
This message  of the war was passed onto the American public and the news reported from  Vietnam became a presentation of partial facts as the full truth (NYT-1).
The My Lai  Massacre was the beginning of an uncovering of violence that few people in  America would believe that our own soldiers were capable of doing, and unleashed  a controversy not only of war crimes by our military, but what the press should  report (NYT-2).
It possibly  may never have been known if it were not for the conscience of Ron Ridenhour, a  young helicopter crewman from Phoenix who flew over the site days after the  tragedy happened, and then heard rumors of it before he left the army. After  debating on what to do for nearly a year he finally wrote a letter detailing his  information, sending 30 copies to officials in the government and military  (NYT-3). In part Ridenhour wrote the following:
 It was late in April, 1968 that I first heard of ï¿½Pinkvilleï¿½ and what allegedly  happened there. I received that first report with some skepticism, but in the  following months I was to hear similar stories from such a wide variety of  people that it became impossible for me to disbelieve that something rather dark  and bloody did indeed occur sometime in March, 1968...One morning in the latter  part of March, Task Force Barker moved out from its firebase headed for ï¿½Pinkville.ï¿½  Its mission: destroy the trouble spot and all of its inhabitants. (Goldstein  -34)
 
Ridenhour went  on to detail his involvement in Vietnam and subsequently what he had been told  by fellow soldiers who had taken part in a very unbelievable event.  Ironically  this was the beginning of Ridenhour applying ethics in moral issues and  principles to his future career as a journalist.
It is  relevant, that Ridenhour is central to the idea of this report and ethics in the  press with the definition of morality defined as:
The effort to guide one's conduct by  reason--that is to do what there are the best reasons for doing, while  giving equal weight to the interests of each individual who will be effected by  one's conduct. (Rachels-14)
 
In accordance  with this moral definition, Ridenhour revealed a dark secret of the Vietnam  Conflict, that many professional journalists had already heard of or had  personally witnessed and because of what one can only think of as dominant  national and military bias, was ignored (NYT-2). Ridenhour searched his  conscience and with the help of his High School teacher, finally took action and  wrote letters to public and military officials based on moral principals  (Hersh-105).
The Army  eventually sent a colonel to interview Ridenhour, after Senator Udall from  Arizona had pressured Senator Rivers from South Carolina, the Chairman of the  Armed Forces Committee, to influence the Army to look into the matter. The sad  note of this is that many people in the military had been aware of the tragedy  within hours of its occurrence, including two army journalists and the soldiers  and officers who took part, plus the commanding officers of the regiment and  division (Hersh -22). This also may be the only reason the national press  eventually got interested in the massacre because a top level scandal involving  very high ranking Army officers, possibly even General Westmoreland, commander  of Vietnam forces (ï¿½Scandalï¿½). Amongst the hundreds that knew directly, and even  a larger numbers indirectly, there was only one American helicopter pilot,  Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson who actively tried to stop the slaughter of  between 400 to 500 old men, women and children. He reported to his commanding  officers over the airwaves (that was heard at Division level and recorded) what  was going on. Thompson even landed his helicopter between the American soldiers  and Vietnamese to stop the killing.  Thompson thought that the soldiers would be  court marshaled, and so did not seek any further action after that day  (ï¿½Thompsonï¿½).
If had it not  been for the persistence of Ridenhour, the My Lai Massacre  may never have been  known. He would stir a hornetï¿½s nest that the military, the government, the  people of America, and even many members of the press believed should have never  been touched (CPD-1). But because of his tenacity in trying to get someone to  pay attention, the word eventually got out through rumor, to a very wide body of  people, and yet it was not until October 22, 1969, that one journalist finally  picked up a thread of information and started to follow it on an investigative  journey. His name was Seymour Hersh (Hammer -133).
It was Hersh  who would ultimately uncover the story, but it was the Fort Benning public  information office that first gave a press release to the local paper, the  Ledger-Enquirer  Sept. 5, 1969.  ï¿½On that day, in  newspaper offices and broadcasting studios around the United States, a small  story, less than a hundred words long, clattered across the Associated Press  ticker.
ï¿½ï¿½FORT BENNING, GA. (AP)-AN ARMY  OFFICER HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH MURDER IN THE DEATHS OF AN UNSPECIFIED NUMBER OF  CIVILIANS IN VIET NAM [sic] IN 1968, POST AUTHORITIES HAVE REVEALED  COL.  DOUGLAS TUCKER, INFORMATION OFFICER, SAID THE CHARGE WAS BROUGHT FRIDAY AGAINST  1ST LT. WILLIAM L. CALLEY JR., 26, OF MIAMI, FLA., A TWO-YEAR VETERAN WHO WAS TO  HAVE BEEN DISCHARGED FROM THE SERVICE SATURDAYï¿½ï¿½ (Hammer -10).
 
Several  other reporters had good tips in later weeks about the case but failed to  persuade their news bureaus to take it seriously enough to mount a major  inquiry. It was a Media mentality out of focus, so it was Seymour Hersh who  first found the press release on Sept. 6, 1969 in The New York Times and  pursued on his own (Hammer- 173).
Hersh writes  in his book on the My Lai Massacre,
Officers in the Pentagon were  prepared for a flood of questions that weekend from all news media-but it didn't  come. ï¿½I was amazed that it didn't get picked up, just amazed,ï¿½ said one  colonel. It would appear that the press had become so accustomed to  unaccountable death in Vietnam, that this small release of civilian murder was  hardly news worthy. Five days later the news of Calley's arrest was telecast on  the Huntley-Brinkley news show and millions of viewers were told that Calley  ï¿½ï¿½has been accused of premeditated murder of a number of South Vietnamese  civilians. The murders are alleged to have been committed a year ago and the  investigation is continuing. A growing number of such cases is coming to light  and the Army doesnï¿½t now what to do about themï¿½(Hersh- 130).
 
This quite possibly was the first time the media even  hinted that something was going very wrong ethically and morally inside the Army  that was fighting a politically polarized war in Vietnam.
It was only  because of the dogged persistence of Hersh and his dedication to the role of a  journalist that the actual truth of the event would finally be revealed.  Hersh  writes that he received a tip on October 22 that,  ï¿½The Army's trying to court martial some guy in secret at Fort Benning for  killing seventy-five Vietnamese civilians,ï¿½ the source told him (Hersh-29). In  fact, the Army was still trying to keep any word about the events at My Lai  out  of the newspapers. By October 29, 1969, Hersh found Calleyï¿½s lawyer and  succeeded where other reporters  had failed to dig into the press release.  He  went to Salt Lake City to interview the lawyer, but  before leaving Washington,  he had received confirmation of the essential facts of the story from a  government source. Calleyï¿½s lawyer confirmed them, adding that: ï¿½ï¿½The thing  that's important is this: why do we prosecute our own people while on a  search-and-destroy mission and they kill some people, be they civilian or not.  Is there a point in the chain of command at which somebody could be tried? I  think notï¿½(Hersh -29).
On November 11, Hersh flew to Fort Benning and found  Calley for an interview and said that Calley was apprehensive and knew what was coming and that Hersh would be the last reporter to whom he would talk with, for  many months. Hersh wrote,
He  told me, that evening, a  little bit about the operation; he also told me how many people he had been  accused of killing. I flew back to Washington the next day and began to write my  story. I did it somewhat hesitantly, my thought being that Calley, perhaps, was  as much of a victim as those infants he and his men murdered at My Lai...  (Hersh-30).
 
With that, Hersh, as an investigative reporter began  a series of articles that would be initially ignored by all of the major media.
Once I had completed my research  on My Lai 4, I tried to get it published. Life and Look magazines weren't  interested. With some hesitation, I turned over my story to the Dispatch News  Service, a small Washington news agencyï¿½Fifty newspapers were offered the  initial Dispatch story by cable on November 12[1969]; more than thirty including  many of the leading newspapers in the nation published it the next dayï¿½(Hersh  -131).
 
In a follow-up  story on November 20, Hersh gave eyewitness accounts of soldiers involved in the  massacre (LT-2).  One them was Michael Terry in Utah:
They just marched through shooting everybody ... they had them in a group
standing in front of a ditch, just like a Nazi-type thing. One officer ordered
a kid to machine gun everybody down. But the kid just couldn't do it. He threw
the machine gun down and the officer picked it up ... I don't remember seeing
many men in the ditch, mostly women and kids (LT-1).
 
The ramifications of the uncovering of My Lai was  that Seymour Hersh would later win the Pulitzer Prize for reporting a story that  many people in America did not want to read, let alone believe. The American  public would even turn against those who brought out the truth.  ï¿½Ridenhour too,  felt the brunt of public anger over his in baring the deed. At first the mail  was favorable, but within a couple weeks, he was getting letters asserting, ï¿½I  want to tell you, you are a re traitorï¿½a Hanoi agentï¿½the shame of our societyï¿½ï¿½ï¿½  (Hammer -176).  
It would take another five years, and nearly 30,000  more American soldiers lives (and unknown hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese)  before the politicians and military generals finally had to bend to the publicï¿½s  will and bring American troops home. But the My Lai tragedy had been exposed by  reporters who acted with moral responsibility and that helped end the war in  Vietnam (Bilton -189).
The My Lai  Massacre would not be fully investigated by the government until 1974, when the  Army would disclose all the details in what has come to be known as ï¿½The Peers  Commission Reportï¿½ by Lieutenant W. R. General Peers, the investigating Army  officer. The report was not written by a ï¿½commissionï¿½ but by General Peers as an  individual. General Peers concluded that:
ï¿½         During the period of 16-19 March  1968, troops of Task Force Barker massacred a large number of Vietnamese  nationals in the village of Son My.
ï¿½         Knowledge as to the extent of the  incident existed at company level at least among the key staff officers and  commander at the Task Force Barker level, and at the 11th Brigade command level.
ï¿½         Efforts at the Americal Division  command level to conceal information concerning what was probably believed to be  the killing of 20-28 civilians actually resulted in the suppression of a war  crime of far greater magnitude. [unknown actual figure, but up to 500 were  slaughtered]
ï¿½         The commander of the 11th Brigade,  upon learning that a war crime had probably been committed, deliberately set out  to conceal the fact from proper authority and to deceive his commander  concerning the matter.
ï¿½          Investigations concerning the  incident conducted within the Americal Division were superficial and misleading  [this includes false information given and repeated by the press] and not  subjected to substantive review.
ï¿½         Efforts were made at every level  of command from company to division to withhold and suppress information  concerning the incident at Son My.
 
ï¿½One  aspect of the Son My operation most difficult to comprehend is that the facts  remained hidden for so long. Within the Americal Division, at every command  level from company to\division, actions were taken or omitted which together  effectively concealed from higher headquarters the events which transpiredï¿½ï¿½  (Goldstein - 58). The culpability of the  press was not fully covered  until 1989 with the BBC TV documentary and book Four Hours in My Lai.
 
The Analysis of  Reporting the My Lai Massacre
 
What  happened and what was revealed. There is no question that the massacre at My  Lai  occurred but later it was revealed it was the wrong village ï¿½ in fact the  village that was a Viet Cong headquarters was only two miles away (Hammer  -xii).  But what is the perhaps the saddest part of this tragedy is that the  Army had been systematically slaughtering innocent people in what was called a  ï¿½Free Fire Zoneï¿½ since 1965 (NYT-2).
It is the  question of ethics that the press had been aware of ï¿½Indiscriminate Causalitiesï¿½  long before the issue was ever brought to the publicï¿½s attention by Ridenhour  (NYT-2). Contemporary military vernacular is Collateral Damage. ï¿½Broadly  defined, collateral damage is unintentional damage or incidental damage  affecting facilities, equipment or personnel occurring as a result of military  actions directed against targeted enemy forces or facilitiesï¿½ (ï¿½Damageï¿½).  But  in 1968, the American Press was nearly as guilty as the soldiers who did the  killing, in keeping this a dark chapter for so long, and yet they had helped  establish an attitude, that ï¿½ï¿½most Americans believed the massacre to have just  been one of those things that are bound to happen in warï¿½ (Bilton - 377).
Reporters such  as Neil Sheehan, had been in Vietnam since 1964 when the first Marines were sent  in, and most of them took part in what was known as the ï¿½Five Oï¿½clock Folliesï¿½  where they conveyed the line of thought and agenda of the military.
ï¿½The tragic story of Vietnam is not in truth a tale of malevolent men bent upon conquest for person gain or  imperial glory. It Is the story of an entire generation of  leaders (and an  entire generation of followers) so conditioned by the  tension of the  cold war years that they were unable to perceive in 1965 (and later) that the Communist adversary was no longer a monolithï¿½..ï¿½ said Townsend Hoopes, the former Under Secretary of the Air Force, January1970 (NYT-2).
 
 Sheehan goes on, ï¿½Kids  do get killed in war. Besides, I'd  never read the laws governing the  conduct of war, although I had watched the war for three years in Vietnam  and had written about it for five. Apparently, a lot of the men in Saigon and Washington who we directing the war didn't read those laws either, or if they did, interpreted them rather loosely.ï¿½ Sheehan includes the press in this estimation by reporting personal observations  as a war correspondent in Vietnam. He writes,
Let's take a look at our  conduct in Vietnam through the  viewing glass of these laws. The  Army Field Manï¿½ual  says that it is illegal to attack hospitals. We  routinely bombed and shelled them. The destruction of Vietï¿½ Cong and North Vietnamese  Army Hospitals in the South  Vietnamese countryside was announced  at the daily press  briefings, the Five o'clock Follies, by  American military spokesï¿½men  in Saigon (NYT-2).
 
Sheehan  confirms his own culpability as a Correspondent when he describes what had  become a common occurrence two years before My Lai in The New York Times.  
In Novemï¿½ber, 1965. I found five fishing hamï¿½lets on the coast of Quangngai  Province in central Vietnam, not far from My Lai, which had been ravaged over  the previous two months by the five inch guns of United States Navy deï¿½stroyers  and by American and South Vietnamese fighter-bombers. The loï¿½cal Vietnamese  officials told me that at least 184 civilians had been killed. After a day of  interviewing the surviï¿½vors among the ruins, I concluded that a reasonable  estimate might run as high as 600 deadï¿½No common-sense military purpose seemed  to be served. When I wrote my story describing the agony of the fisher folk,  however, it did not occur to me that I had discovered a possiï¿½ble war crime. The  thought also does not seem to have occurred to my editors or to most readers of  The Times. None of the similar stories that I and other reporters wrote later on  provoked any outrage, exï¿½cept among that minority with the field of vision to  see what was hapï¿½pening. As Lieutenant Calley told the prosecutor at sort  Benning, ï¿½It wasn't any big deal, sirï¿½ (NYT-2).
 
The words of  Lt. Calley who was tried for the murder of 109 Vietnamese women and children,  best expressï¿½s the attitude of indiscriminate war in Army and accepted as normal  policy by many he saw what was going on.
ï¿½ï¿½God,ï¿½ people say. ï¿½But these  were old men, and women, and children.ï¿½ I tell you: I didnï¿½t see it. I had this  mission, and I was intent upon it: I only saw, Theyï¿½re the enemyï¿½ (Sacks- 8).
 
A ï¿½Free Fire  Zoneï¿½ (kill anything alive inside the zone) had become a common feature of  American warfare in Vietnam at least two years before the My Lai Massacre. As  Sheehan reported, the two Army journalists present at the My Lai Massacre were  not the first journalists to witness unquestionable war crimes in Vietnam  (NYT-2).
Relevant Reporting
Early on,  Richard Hammer, a freelance reporter discovered that Seymour Hersh was well  ahead of him in reporting the massacre, so he decided to turn his investigation  into a deeper and longer range project. In his book he wrote,
ï¿½why an atrocity, the massacre at Son My village, could occur, and how and why  American soldiers sent to protect and defend a people could turn and slaughter  them (Hammer - xi).
 
What Hammer  came to understand was that there had been a program of conditioning that had completely taken over the ability of the soldiers to see reality as it was, and  obey a blind ideology of destruction that was dictated by the Army leadership  and all but ignored by the American media. In his research Hammer interviewed an  Army officer who first gave a press release of the My Lai operation.
ï¿½two years later, the press officer, Arthur Dunn, was to say [it] ï¿½raised  questions in my mindï¿½ as to just how the Viet Cong could have carried away all  its other weapons from such a major engagement at close-quarters (Hammer - 6).
           
Hammer saw at  this point many people had simply chosen to ignore signs (passed  on by the  press)  that something had gone wrong, and he writes, ï¿½The New York Times reported it in a front page story Monday [March 18, 1968] morning the American  version of the assault on Son My [My Lai], as relayed from the military in  Saigon,  
The operation is another American offensive to clear enemy pockets still  threatening the citiesï¿½two companies of United States soldiers moved in on the  enemy force from opposite sides, heavy artillery barrages and armed helicopters  were called in to pound the North Vietnamese soldiers (Hammer - 7).
 
As history  would eventually expose, the above was a partial lie (there were no North  Vietnamese soldiers or VC) produced by the military and perpetuated for the next  19 months through the help of the cooperation of the media (CT-2).
What is  astounding is that many reporters had already witnessed other so called  ï¿½legitimate military actionsï¿½ where atrocities were committed, but willingly  went along with the Armyï¿½s line of perception. In many ways, reporters were  amiss morally even more so than soldiers who were conditioned to obey, for  Reporters were not threatened with court martial and could leave the battlefield  any time they chose. But there were paradoxes within this observation, for one  of the people who witnessed the My Lai Massacre was both a soldier and a  photojournalist (CPD-1).
Hammer wrote that  on August 1, 1968, in the weekly  newspaper of the Americal Division, The Southern Cross, an article  illustrated  My Lai (Operation Muscatine) with photographs by Ronald Haeberle,  an American soldier-photographer assigned on March 16 to Company C, the division  reporter (who had also witnessed the truth of the tragedy) wrote:
Operation Muscatine [My Lai] involved some of  the largest encounters with the Viet Cong in the War's fledgling history. Troops  twice encountered a Viet Cong battalion near the village of My Lai and killed a  total of 196 enemy soldiers (Hammer - 8).
 
Lies were sanctified. An ironic  event would take place 19 months later when the Cleveland Plain Dealer  would publish photographs of the massacre.
 
Photographs showing South Vietnamese civilians allegedly killed in the incident.  It said the photographs showing South Vietnamese civilians allegedly killed in  the incident.  It said the photographs came from a former Army combat  photographer, Ronald L. Haeberle, of Cleveland. Haeberle said in a copyright  story that he joined the company just before it entered the village and heard  from the men it was suspected the villagers were Viet Cong sympathizers.  He  said he saw men, women and children slaughtered (CPD - 2).
 
The  photographs unleashed a backlash from the American public, calling Haeberle and  the Plain Dealer unpatriotic. Some people said the paper showed ï¿½poor tasteï¿½ in  publishing such ï¿½obsceneï¿½ photos. Some of the corpses were partially nude (Bilton  189).
Hammer writes  in his book, One Morning in the War: The tragedy of Son My,
The soldiers of the first platoon  of Charley Company went in shooting, and for nearly an hour they did not stop.  They were convinced they were attacking Pinkville, or My Lai, the VC stronghold  (and some of them still think so). They were prepared for heavy action and large  casualties. Instead, they hit the sub-hamlet of Xom Langï¿½ a hamlet which if not  considered exactly friendly was, nevertheless, not considered implacably  hostile. On the American military maps, it was called My Lai 4.
By the margin of error of less  than two miles, and perhaps because of the mis-naming by the Americans, a  settlement which was not the center of the VC, where the VC had never appeared  in great numbers, was the first to suffer that morning, and suffer in the  extreme. What is further note of irony in the tragedy was meaning of the name  of  Xom Lang or My Lai,  which meant The Place Where Trouble Does Not Come (Hammer- 10).
 
Objective Reporting.
Few  reporters  were doing Objective Reporting during the Vietnam Conflict. The press failed on  a colossal scale in reporting war crimes years before My Lai was revealed. The  three individuals written about in this report are most significant allowing the  tragedy to be uncovered, revealed and analyzed.
Ron Ridenhour  first uncovered the dark secret. Although not yet a reporter, it would be the  beginning of a career as an investigative reporter.
[He] was convinced that  he had to stir the cold ashes of Son My, and the only way  to do it would be to enlist powerful support. He sat down and  wrote a letter of about fifteen hundred words, detailing  everything he had heard about Son My and listing in it the  names of those who had told him specific events and those whom  they had mentioned. He made thirty copies of the letter and  then sent them off to the Army and the Executive and  Congressional branches of the Federal Governï¿½ment (Hersh-106).
 
Seymour Hersh would win the Pulitzer Prize  by bringing Ridenhourï¿½s story to the front pages of the world press. Hersh  exemplified the role of an ethical journalist.
Richard Hammer, almost in a line of tribute  to Ridenhour and Hersh, would visit My Lai two years after the tragedy and write  the book that gave analysis and understanding of how and why not only soldiers,  but the press had been morally responsible in the ongoing tragedy of the Vietnam  Conflict. America did not begin withdrawing troops until 1973, and the war did  not end until 1975. In the end over there were more than 50,000 American dead; South Vietnamese dead were estimated at  more than 400,000, and Viet Cong and North Vietnamese at over 900,000 (ï¿½Deadï¿½).
CONCLUSION SECTION
 
In 1967, the  author of this report was a young man in the American Army trained as a ï¿½Combat  Medic.ï¿½ It is because of that background the topic of this paper was chosen, and  also because he believed at that time the American media was unethical and  morally irresponsible. The author of this paper remembers the ï¿½Five oï¿½clock  Folliesï¿½ and the element of Army propaganda was obvious to him. In the  last 18 the months the author of this report has had what is known as a ï¿½deja  vousï¿½ experience. It happened when the battle calls of the war in Iraq  began a new moment of the mediaï¿½s collaboration in what is now daily being  revealed to the American public. This time it may be a joke.
Bush provided amusing descriptions of photographs Wednesday night during the  annual dinner of the Radio and Television News Correspondents Association. Some  showed the president in awkward poses as he looked behind furniture in the Oval  Office. For those photos, Bush told the audience, ï¿½Those weapons of mass  destruction have got to be somewhere ... nope, no weapons over there ... maybe  under here?ï¿½ (ï¿½Weaponsï¿½).
 
Once again  America is involved in a war that had no clear understanding or agreement in the  conduct of it, and seems also unlikely to have any clear conclusion. Politicians  and myth-makers would prefer us to believe, that distortion is as good as truth.
The ï¿½Domino  Theoryï¿½ led to the ï¿½Free Fire Zonesï¿½ that allowed the military and the press to  overlook the mass murder of civilians. Now there is new fear terminology. The  mythmakers once again have manipulated the American public in using the scary  label of ï¿½Terroristsï¿½ which has allowed the ï¿½Weapons of Mass Destructionï¿½ story  to be initiated by the Government and perpetuated by the Media. What happened in  Vietnam seems to be happening today in a new form.  ï¿½There are reports are  coming out now, that could have been written before the war [with Iraq]ï¿½ (c/n  3).
What seems  familiar (now with the time of Vietnam)  to the author of this report are three  factors discussed in The Virtuous Journalist. They are:
ï¿½         Situational Factors. Distortions  caused by situational factors arise from a condition inherent in the nature of  circumstance of the subject of a news storyï¿½ (Pg 72).
ï¿½         Structural factors.  There are  distinct characterizations in each medium that determine the way in which  information conveyed by the medium will be understood (pg 73).
ï¿½         Cultural factors. A distortion and  imbalance resting on cultural assumptions can result from gaps in historical  knowledge, reliable cultural information, or personal experience (pg 74).
 
To equate this very crudely and  quickly, the author believes the factors now are:
 
ï¿½         Situational ï¿½ Terrorism has  replaced Communism and Weapons of Mass Destruction has become a new form of a  Free Fire Zone.
ï¿½         Structural ï¿½ The role of  newsmakers in the media has been taken over primarily by the infotainment media,  television --eyewitness destruction of the smart bombs and imbedded reporters  gave blow by blow accounts of the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction.
ï¿½         Cultural ï¿½ Vietnam was in the  process of a civil war, much as Iraq has been in some form of revolution since  Old Testament times. In Vietnam, the terms of gook, slant-eye and slope were  derogative names for anyone Vietnamese, as familiar to American Troops as now an  Arab is a camel-jockey, dune-coon, and Target.
 
The author  admits this is a very broad generalization, but questionable information has led  America to war. As stated in The Virtuous Journalist,
ï¿½a common problem in journalism is relying on unsubstantiated and questionable  premises without acknowledging their weakness, to generate a desired conclusion  (pg 184).
 
The ultimate  lesson we have to learn from war may yet have to arrive. As for what came of the  My Lai Massacre, little can be said to outweigh the death of so many people,  right or wrong. War has always made careers for some people as it did for most  of the writers presented in this report. And yet far more than income was  realized, for the soul was searched extensively by Ridenhour, Hersh and Hammer,  and perhaps their testament of truth to posterity will be a redeeming quality  and give hope where some would believe there is none. Truth may be painful, but  it is honorable.
Seymour Hersh  wrote in the New Yorker Nov. 24, 2003, about the failure of the corporate  media, to report new findings of other atrocities in Vietnam done by American  soldiers known as the ï¿½Tiger Force.ï¿½ or launch their own investigations into the  official cover-up. Hersh is still attempting to get the media to do its job.  ï¿½The Blade's[the breaking newspaper] extraordinary investigation of Tiger Force,  however, remains all but invisible. None of the four major television networks  have picked it up (although CBS and NBC have been in touch with the Blade), and  most major newspapers have either ignored the story or limited themselves to  publishing an Associated Press summary,ï¿½ Hersh wrote (ï¿½Tigerï¿½).
For the  author, one person stood out in this testimony of tragedy that was neither a  reporter nor writer. He is Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, who perhaps is the  type of human being that gives meaning to the terms of ethics and morality and  why people who practice journalism seek to emulate such courage in their  profession. It is about honor, not reward. Thompson would not get a medal he  deserved for his act of heroism until 30 years later. In 1998 Thompson was  recognized by the American government.
It wasn't until March 6, 1998,  after internal debate among Pentagon officials (who feared an award would reopen  old wounds) and outside pressure from reporters, that Thompson and Colburn [his  gunner in the helicopter] finally received medals in a ceremony at the Vietnam  Veterans Memorial.
But both say a far more gratifying  reward was a trip back to My Lai this March to dedicate a school and a "peace  park." It was then they finally met a young man named Do Hoa, who they believe  was the boy they rescued from that death-filled ditch. ï¿½Being reunited with the  boy was just...I can't even describe itï¿½ says Colburn. And Thompson, also  overwhelmed, doesn't even try  (ï¿½Thompsonï¿½).
            One often hopes that  there is an honor that is larger than life, and that sometimes one views a  person, or feels a place where history has shown humans have dignity. But to  conclude this report, the author is left with a feeling that perhaps Richard  Hammer had when he put the following quote from The Rebel by Albert  Camus, in the front of his book, One Morning in the War; The Tragedy of Son  My.
ï¿½The triumph of  the man who kills or tortures is marred by only one shadow: he is unable to feel  that he is innocent. Thus he must create guilt in his victim so that, in a world  that has no direction, universal guilt will authorize no other course of action  than the use of force and give its blessing to nothing but success. When the  concept of innocence disappears from the mind of the innocent victim himself,  the value of power establishes a definitive rule over a world in despair. That  is why an unworthy and cruel penitence reigns over this world where only the  stones are innocentï¿½ (Hammer -I).
Bibliography
Beauchamp, Tom, L., Stephen Klaidman. The  Virtuous Journalist. New York: The Oxford Press, 1987
 
Bilton, Michael and Kevin Sim. Four Hours in  My Lai. New York: Viking, 1992.
 
Calley, William L. and John Sack. Lieutenant  Calley: His Own Story. New York: Viking, 1971.
 
Goldstein Joseph, Burke  Marshall and Jack Schwartz. The My Lai Massacre And Its Cover-Upï¿½Beyond the Reach of the Law: The  Peers Report with a supplement and introductory essay on the limits of the law.  London: The Free Press, 1976
Hammer, Richard, One Morning in the War: The Tragedy at Son My.  New York: Coward-McCann, 1970.
Hersh, Seymour, My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and its  Aftermath. New York: Random House, 1970.
Rachels, James, The Elements of Moral Philosophy . New  York: McGraw-Hill, 2003.
 
CPD//Cleveland Plain  Dealer  --  CT//Chicago Tribune ï¿½ LT//The Times  (London),
NYT//The New York  Times --PI//The Philadelphia Inquirer
SFE//San Francisco  Examiner
 
CPD-1 Eszterman, Joseph, ï¿½Cameraman Saw GIs Slay 100  Villagers,ï¿½ Cleveland Plain Dealer 20 Nov. 1969: pg 1+
 
CPD-2 Braestrup, Peter, ï¿½Pinkville Massacre. Like Scandal in the Family for Ft Benning.ï¿½ Cleveland Plain Dealer 1 Dec. 1969: pg 7A
 
CT-1 /Kamm, Henry, ï¿½GIs Leery of Massacre Reports.ï¿½ Chicago Tribune 1  Dec. 1969:
pg 1+
NewpaperArticles continued
 
CT-2 / Currie, William, Joseph  McLaughlin, ï¿½Army Story of Pinkville ï¿½Fishyï¿½ EX-GI, Chicago Tribune 28 Nov. 1969: pg 1+
 
LT-1/ Hersh, Seymour, ï¿½New accounts of the My Lai massacre: Men challenge Medina, The Times 9 Dec, 1969: pg 10
 
LT-2/ Hersh, Seymour, ï¿½How Men Became Wild Animals,ï¿½ The Times 2 Dec.1969: pg 2
 
NYT-1/ Hammer, Richard, ï¿½Cover-Upï¿½ New York Times Mar 26, 1972 :  pg. BR3
 
NYT-2 /Sheehan, Neil, ï¿½Should We Have War Crime Trials?ï¿½ The New York Times 28  May 1971
pg. BR1
 
NYT -3 /ï¿½Statements by Ziegler, Resor and Stennis.ï¿½ The New York Times. Nov. 27,  1968: pg 18
 
PI-1  /wire service, ï¿½Flier Given Medal But Army Silent.ï¿½ The Philadelphia  Inquirer 29 Nov. 1969: pg 1
SFE -1/  Flynn, William, ï¿½Tens of Thousands Echo the Cry Hereï¿½ July 1, 1968: pg 1