<P> On 3 November 1969 President Richard M. Nixon made a televised speech laying out his policy toward Vietnam . He promised to continue to support the South Vietnamese government (through Vietnamization) and held out a plan for the withdrawal of American combat troops . This "silent majority" speech, not the Tet Offensive, marked the real watershed of the American involvement . In it, Nixon permanently altered the nature of the issue . "No longer was the question whether the United States was going to get out, but rather how and how fast ." Nixon's policy toward the media was to reduce as far as possible the American public's interest in and knowledge of the war in Vietnam . He began by sharply limiting the press's access to information within Vietnam itself . </P> <P> The peace talks in Paris, the viability of South Vietnam, of its military and its government, and its effect on American disengagement, became the prime stories during this period for the news media . The reportage of the Tet / Khe Sanh period had been unique, and after it was over reportage settled back into its normal routines . According to Clarence Wyatt, the American disengagement was: </P> <P> like watching a film running backward . American troops were leaving, until there were only a handful of advisers left . The communists were once again on the advance, spreading their influence closer and closer to the major cities . The South Vietnamese military was once again on the defensive, and the leadership of the nation was isolated and increasingly paranoid...Nixon's goal, like Kennedy's, was for the press to have nothing to report . </P> <P> The gradual dissipation of American support for the war was apparent in changes in the source of news stories . The traditional sources - press conferences, official news releases, and reports of official proceedings were less utilized than ever before . Reporters were doing more research, conducting more interviews, and publishing more analytical essays . There was also an increase in the number of American homes that acquired a television set which led to a rise in people gaining their knowledge of the war from television . The media never became "acutely critical...but more sober, and more skeptical It did not, however, examine or reexamine its basic assumptions about the nature of the war it had helped to propagate . Never, for example, did historian Daniel Hallin hear an American correspondent or commentator utter the word imperialism in connection with the U.S. commitment on television . On those rare occasions when the underlying reasons for the American intervention were explicitly questioned, journalists continued to defend the honorableness of American motives . </P>

What was the media coverage of the vietnam war