Dark Horses

Much has been written in the American media about the failures of our policy in Vietnam, and since those failures were many and lurid the exercise is amply justified.

Only rarely, however, has the postmortem lens been focused on the media’s own important role in helping produce the Vietnam calamity: their frequent misreporting of the war, overemphasis on marginalia, and, toward the end, decisive influence in undercutting support at home for a policy of relative firmness toward the Communists.