The purpose of this research paper is to examine the television news and its role in the American Vietnam War in the six months following the Tet Offensive. So, that's the six months following January 31, 1968. The purpose of examining the role of the television news at this time is to determine if it resulted in a decline in public support of the war after the Tet, assuming there was one. So step one is determining if there was a drop in public support of the war, step two is determining the television media's role in the drop in public support if there was one, and step three is if it wasn't the television news then what? There are many myths surrounding the Vietnam War and the part played on the behalf of the media in the war. Did the television news portray the Tet offensive in a negative light leading to a decline in public support of the war? Did the shock of seeing the violence of the Tet offensive, the public's lack of military understanding, and the unraveling of what then appeared to be lies on the behalf of the Johnston Administration about winning the war in Vietnam, lead to a dip in public opinion? So the question here is: Was there a significant drop in public opinion, what may have caused it, and what role did the television news media play in all of this?' After spending time looking into this question the conclusion is somewhat mixed. Yes, the Tet was violent but, it was more the realization that the Johnston Administration was lying to the public that swayed public support than anything else. Also, my sources indicate that the television media's presentation of the offensive was gruesome, but war is gruesome and my sources say that they were prepared for this reality of war. The Living Room War In our class we were told that the 1968 Tet Offensive resulted in a sharp decline in public support of the war in Vietnam in the six months following the Tet. The Tet offensive was a massive offensive mounted by the communist forces in Vietnam against the allied forces on January 31, 1968. But why did this drop in public support occur? Did this drop in public support occur because of the shock of realizing that the war wasn't going as presented by the Johnston Administration? The Johnson administration was the administration of then president of the United States of America Lyndon B. Johnson. Was this decline a result of the violence shown on the television news? Was this a result of Walter Cronkite, loved and renowned American news reporter in the 1960's, asking questions of the war effort in Vietnam? If not the Tet offensive, then what? It is important to determine if this decline was a result of the of television news portrayal of the Tet offensive because it will give us insight on how we should represent future wars in the media. After interviewing American's who were alive at the time of the Tet I have determined that there was a decline in public support of the war in the six months following the Tet, but not to the extent that we learned in class. Later events in the Vietnam War like the Kent State shootings, the expansion of the war into Cambodia, and the release of the pentagon papers were cited as events that caused these people to lose faith in the war. Of those who did cite the Tet Offensive as causing them to lose faith in the war viewed the Tet as one event in a series of events that changed their minds on the war, not as the most significant event in this matter. Of those who stated that the Tet did play a role in swaying their opinions stated that it was the realization the war wasn't going as presented by the Johnston administration, not the violence shown on television news. But there's a second side of this study represented by The first half of this study is presented in the form of personal interviews as documented by myself. These interviewees were asked to recall the events of the Tet Offensive, how they reacted to the Tet offensive in regards to their support of the war, and how they heard about such events. I also asked the subjects of these interviews about their initial opinion of the war, if that opinion changed what things influenced this change, and to elaborate on this. The first man I interviewed was Dr. Charles E. Brooks, a history professor at Texas A&M University. Dr. Brooks like many of the people I interviewed stated that he was caught up in what he called the "Cold War Mentality. 1 This cold war mentality being as we've studied but in Dr. Brook's words: "That it was important to make a stand against communism and that communism was an expansive and aggressive system that if not challenged and resisted would continue in a very dangerous way. 2 So, Dr. Brooks stated that he was a supporter of intervening in Vietnam to resist communist expansion in Vietnam. Dr. Brooks stated that he did not change his mind on the war until 1970 with then President of the United States Richard Nixon's expansion of the war into Cambodia. Cambodia being the one the countri