Daniel C. Hallin
Autor de The "Uncensored War": The Media and Vietnam
Sobre El Autor
Obras de Daniel C. Hallin
Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics (Communication, Society and Politics) (2004) 27 copias
Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World (Communication, Society and Politics) (2011) 9 copias
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
Todavía no hay datos sobre este autor en el Conocimiento Común. Puedes ayudar.
Miembros
Reseñas
Premios
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 7
- Miembros
- 104
- Popularidad
- #184,481
- Valoración
- 3.3
- Reseñas
- 2
- ISBNs
- 30
Hallin writes, “It is only in the context of a certain political climate and a certain conception of what journalism is about that an administration’s control of information can give it this kind of control [as in the Gulf of Tonkin incident] over the content of the news” (pg. 21). He continues, “The president’s power to control foreign affairs news in the early 1960s rested primarily on two factors. The first was the ideology of the Cold War: the bipartisan consensus, forged during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, that had identified foreign policy with ‘national security,’ and hence removed most foreign policy decisions from the agenda of political debate” (pg. 24). Secondly, professional journalism’s commitment to objectivity relied on official facts from the government. Hallin continues, “Where consensus reigns, however, they [journalists] rely as heavily as anyone else on the symbolic tools that make up the dominant ideology of their society” (pg. 50). He argues, “The continuing strength of the Cold War consensus is no doubt the most important reason the [Johnson] administration was able to contain the debate over Vietnam policy” (pg. 61). Hallin further argues, “In many ways, the professionalization of journalism in the United States has strengthened rather than weakened the tie between press and state” (pg. 64).
Hallin writes of early television coverage of the war, “While the coverage of a paper like the Times had a dry and detached tone, television coverage presented a dramatic contrast between good, represented by the American peace offensive, and evil, represented by Hanoi” (pg. 118). Beyond this, “Television, moreover, tends to ‘thematize’ – that is, to simplify and unify – not only within a particular story or broadcast, but over time as well. Television tends, in other words, to pick out a limited number of ongoing stories and cover them day in and day out” (pg. 120). Hallin continues, “Television reporting of Vietnam was structured primarily by a different, much less conscious level of ideology: it was structured by a set of assumptions about the value of war – not so much as a political instrument, but as an arena of human action, of individual and national self-expression – and by images and a language for talking about it” (pg. 142). In examining the media itself, Hallin writes, “From 1961 to 1967, for all the tension between the media and government, and for all the mythology about the press as an adversary or watchdog of the state, the independence of the American news media – at least those parts of it we are covering here – was very limited” (pg. 162). This changed, as “By 1968, the establishment itself – and the nation as a whole – was so divided over the war that the media naturally took a far more skeptical stance toward administration policy than in the early years” (pg. 162). Even with this change, “For the most part, television was a follower rather than a leader: it was not until the collapse of consensus was well under way that television’s coverage began to turn around; and when it did turn, it only turned so far” (pg. 163).
Hallin concludes, “It is not clear that it would have been much different if the news had been censored, or television excluded, or the journalists more inclined to defer to presidential authority” (pg. 213). Further, “The collapse of America’s ‘will’ to fight in Vietnam resulted from a political process of which the media were only one part” (pg. 213).… (más)