Impact of War on Media, my perception of the Vietnam War!

My History teacher and my current roommate have probably had the greatest impact on my perception of the vietnam war. In 7th grade US History class, you have different things on your mind, like Lauren sitting to your left, and you're not really concerned when your teacher covers the Vietnam war but there are a few things I remember. Also, my roommate is a history buff and he has war films on top of war films on the Civil War, both WWs, and of course Vietnam so he likes to ramble on about Saigon and the Vietcong. My first perception of the war is that it was very costly and traumatic. I had always heard that we, the United States, had gone into the war cocky with immobal weaponry that wasn't suitable for Jungle warfare and this was the reason that we sustained so many casualties. I knew that this was America's first helicopter war, which allowed medical units to retrieve injured soldiers quickly yet there were still over 300,000 were wounded and died, and that this war was the "Television War". This was the first war that was heavily monitored by the media and I learned this not only through classes but also through movies such as Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Forrest Gump. I was taught that the media created a very negative impression of the war and that the government only showed us what they wanted us to see. During this era the television became the window to the world and our government and media would only show us bombings of US Embassies and suicide bombers or other outrageous acts from the Vietcong that would persuade our judgement about these people. In a video I watched over Vietnam there is a man by the name of Robert Elegant and he was a news reporter that wrote a story titled, "How to lose a War". This article stated that for the first time in history the outcome of a major war wasn't decided on the battlefield or in the negotiating chambers but on the printed page and the television screen. This has basically been the "frame" that I have viewed the Vietnam war through, that the media had the biggest impact on the war and that the US viewers got a distorted image because of the editing and deliberate hiding of information by our own government. The article that I attached keeps with this same perception that I had and actually helps deconstruct my own schema about the war by providing more depth into the media's role. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2526