That’s how you sell TV time. It’s not how you explain Vietnam to anybody’

From Once a Warrior King by David Donovan.  Page 159.  The problems with mainstream media are longstanding as are epistemic reliability in the context of governmental decision-making.

There were five of us sitting at a metal table drinking bourbon and Shasta cola. The tall brown-haired lieutenant across from me was an engineer officer from Long Xuyen; I guessed he was on the province team staff there. The fellow sitting next to me was a red-haired captain from way down in Quan Long. He was a DSA in his province and we struck up an easy camaraderie. The third man was a quiet fellow in civilian clothes. He was either a police advisor on civilian contract or an Agency man. The fourth was a major from MACV headquarters in Saigon. He had been sent down to Can Tho to take care of some business at IV Corps headquarters and thought he was getting a taste of the boonies by having to sit up here drinking bourbon and warm cola. 

The conversation wandered along many avenues and finally settled on the perception we thought the American people had of the war in Vietnam, and how they had come to see things that way. The fellow from Long Xuyen had spoken up and said he didn’t think the Americans had any idea about the reality of life in the Vietnamese villages.

‘What do you expect?’ sneered the Agency man. ‘Most folks back in the States get their news from the damned TV! Those television reporters are all alike! They want to talk about flashy stuff and holler over the microphone while the guns are going off all around them. They want lots of action in the background just to make everything look interesting. That’s how you sell TV time. It’s not how you explain Vietnam to anybody’

The man from Long Xuyen agreed. ‘You know, he snorted, ‘the folks at home have this feeling that they’re informed about things over here just because they watch the evening news. They don’t realize they’re only getting the tiniest little peep at what’s really happening! How do you really tell people in Kansas about a war on the other side of the world when they’re all there watching the TV from the dinner table? I don’t think the folks at home get enough of the right kind of information, but,  hell, I don’t think they would know how to deal with it if they had it’ 

The DSA from Quan Long looked at the civilian across the table and said with a drawl, ‘Well, the folks back in the States may not be getting good information, but it’s hard to bitch about that when even the government can’t get any decent facts. Think about all the filters that are stacked in the information channel between us and Washington. Guys like me on a district team send information back to province. Province talks to IV Corps, from there to Saigon, and from there to Washington. They filter out what they disagree with or what they think will put ’em in a bad light, and send on the rest. By the time it gets back to DC it’s no wonder they can’t make heads or tails of what’s going on over here.

‘That’s right; I volunteered. ‘Everybody in the chain of command is so concerned about covering his own ass that nobody wants to hear any bad news. General Weatherday has come out to my team twice on his tours around IV Corps. Both times my PSA came out in a chopper the day before the general appeared just so he could hear what I intended to say. I couldn’t make a clear report of anything that might have made the PSA or the province team look bad. If I had to report negative information, I had to understate it.Both times I stood there trying to give Weatherday a factual report with the goddamned PSA glaring at me over his shoulder, daring me to let any cats out of the bag. It pissed me off, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it?

The engineer from Long Xuyen spoke up. ‘You could just go ahead and tell the truth’ 

‘And what the hell good would that do?’ I asked. ‘The colonel would only play down anything he didn’t like. Then, just as soon as the general left he would come back and eat me alive. I’d probably get relieved just so he could get somebody out at my team who wouldn’t give him any shit. I’d be bounced off to somewhere else and the only thing I would have accomplished was to let some other goomba have my job.

‘I’ve seen exactly the same thing happen you’re talking about; said the DSA from Quan Long, ‘but most folks don’t want to be a martyr for nothing. Hell, I don’t think generals ever hear much bad news out at the district level. I suspect the province-level briefings are the same sort of emphasize-the-good-understate-the-bad kind of bullshit, too. Weatherday probably thinks things are going great allover IV Corps! When he goes around out in the field and hears nothing but great reports, it’s probably pretty difficult not to believe them. I’ll bet IV Corps plays the same game when they report to Saigon and Saigon does the same thing when they report to Washington’

‘I know that’s exactly what happens between Saigon and DC) said the major from Saigon. ‘You wouldn't believe the jumping through the hat that goes on whenever General Abels has to go back and brief the president or the joint chiefs. We’re generally supposed to make things look as good as we can, and ifyou don’t play the game you can be made to look pretty bad’? The major paused for a second before he said with a chuckle, ‘A lotta people know the building is burning, but nobody wants to yell “Fire.” ’

The conversation wandered off to other topics, but during the evening film that was shown later, I couldn't help but think back over what we had said. In actuality we were all part of the information network, or the misinformation network if that is more appropriate. Everybody hoped somebody else would pick up the pieces of the puzzle and put it all together, but at least at our level, we all passed off the responsibility to someone else. It is no wonder, then, that the American government operated in such a dense fog of optimism and unreal expectations with respect to the American effort in Vietnam. By the time the information from the field got up to the level of the policy-makers, all the chatter and noise had been filtered out. Bad news was downplayed, good news magnified. I suspect many decisions were based on the glossy briefings of some brass hat who was more concerned about where he stood on the promotion list than he was with making sure the planners knew all the hard facts about the American position in South Vietnam.