Photojournalism Was a Defining Feature of the Essay

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Photojournalism was a defining feature of the Vietnam War era, bringing informative but usually horrific images from the front lines to the pages of print and the tubes of television. Therefore, photojournalism was instrumental in shaping the American public sentiment towards the war. Imagery laden with bloodshed and brutality impacted the minds and hearts of Americans, giving fuel to the already fiery anti-war, counterculture movement. Moreover, the Vietnam War was the first televised war. Not only were powerful black and white still shots available, as they were throughout the Korean War. During the height Vietnam War in 1968, about 60% of Americans watched the wartime coverage on television (Kennedy, 2008). Photojournalism during the war in Vietnam altered pubic perception of the war and related social and political consciousness; it also affected the profession of photography, photojournalism, and the nature of the Fifth Estate in general. Journalists and the public were starting to think critically about the role that photographers played in the political process: did they report or did they actively shape public consciousness? Photojournalism became an ethical domain, in which the medium and the message both presented moral conundrums. As Hubert Cookman & Stolley (2008) point out, "for the first time, combat photography was perceived as being against American war policy," (p. 132).

The most controversial aspect of photojournalism during the War in Vietnam was the detail. "Photojournalists brought Vietnam into the nation's living rooms as no other previous war. Americans watched as their soldiers set fire to thatched huts with Zippo lighters. They saw photographs of wounded and dead GIs as well as the bodies of Vietnamese civilians and opponents," (Hubert Cookman & Stolley, 2008, p. 132). The photographs moved many Americans to make a moral judgment about the act of war itself, and gave rise to the existential questions that surrounded the Cold War and anti-Communist sentiment.

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Some, especially on the political right in the United States, have accused photojournalism of causing America's loss in Vietnam (Hubert Cookman & Stolley, 2008).

Photojournalism in Vietnam created what Kennedy (2008) calls "a visual grammar for looking at Vietnam." The meat of this visual grammar was the technique itself: the tools of the trade. Photography had become increasingly advanced technologically by the time the war broke out. Compositional techniques and strategies for shooting also advanced the art of photojournalism. Therefore, the images themselves were more visually captivating. Even when death and morbidity were their subjects, the images had an unmistakable aesthetic. As Gist (2012) puts it, "An unprecedented level of media coverage made the Vietnam war a watershed moment in the discipline of photography."

"The use of photographs to record or suppress events, or to support or contest a claim, is nothing new, but in Vietnam the unprecedented degree of coverage of this politically divisive war brought these issues into sharp relief," (Gist, 2012). Media companies understood the power of their imagery, using it to secure viewership. The media also unabashedly manipulated their viewers' moods to create sensationalist journalism, and a level of graphic reporting that was unprecedented. " The media elites were very sensitive" to its own power to shape American values (Kennedy, 2008). When media elites had their own political agenda, they were able to execute that agenda with a greater force than would have been possible without the power of the photographers on their payroll.

The frequency of reporting during the Vietnam War was also an instrumental factor that motivated media organizations to increase the number of photojournalists on the ground in Vietnam. A liberal policy towards photojournalists enabled a great influx into the war zones. "The large numbers of photographers and the relative autonomy that they enjoyed contributed to a new.....

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