War Coverage

Sharon Bernstein’s Dec. 23 report on the risks faced by news crews during wartime was marred unfortunately by a thoroughly scurrilous reference to Vietnam war coverage.

The allegation, first given currency by frustrated military officers, then the politicians and nationally syndicated columnists in Washington, is repeated (in the article) by Andrew Stern of the UC Berkeley School of Journalism: that most of the U.S. correspondents based in Saigon covered the war by sitting in the Hotel Caravelle bar and relied on the gossip of their colleagues in order to file their stories. Bernstein quotes Stern as saying “you went out sometimes to get pictures, but basically you did all your work at the bar.”

Having covered Vietnam intermittently from the time of the French withdrawal in 1956 until the final U.S. pullout in 1975, I cannot recall any serious journalist who relied on bar gossip from the Caravelle as the basis of a story. Too many good reporters were killed or risked their lives on a daily basis to be so maligned.

MURRAY FROMSON, Director, Center for International Journalism, USC