VIETNAM VETERANS FOR ACADEMIC REFORM
The University of Kansas Student Auxiliary
V.V.A.R.: Leading the student revolt on campus against speech codes, political correctness, multiculturalism, gender feminism, dormitory re-education, lying about Vietnam, and other instruments of academic oppression.
Leonard Magruder - Founder/President
Former professor of psychology - Suffolk College, N.Y.
Member: National Association of Scholars
CONTACT: Magruder44@aol.com - Phone: 785-312-9303
Part 5 of a 10-part series, Vietnam and the Media, from the archives of Vietnam Veterans for Academic Reform - Leonard Magruder, President
Part 5 - Subject: The Campaign Against PBS
This is an account of a national campaign that was waged by Mr. Magruder that forced PBS stations to show a documentary on Vietnam, narrated by Charlton Heston, that it had tried to suppress. The film detailed how CBS had misled the nation about the Tet Offensive. Martha Bayle, in The Wall Street Journal said, “Television’s Vietnam: The Impact of Media attacks the liberal bias of contemporary news coverage of the l968 Tet Offensive. It suggests that reporters (especially TV reporters ) turned a U.S. military victory into a political and psychological defeat. PBS has refused to give air time to the film.”
By spending $6000 of his own money to show the film on various television stations around the country, Mr. Magruder exposed the issue, creating a landslide defection on the part of station managers who had been told by PBS executives not to show the film. In addition, he wrote a letter to all 314 PBS station managers appealing to them to defy PBS Headquarters and show the film.
That summer, Mr. Magruder, along with Col. Chuck Allen, publisher/editor of the National Vietnam Veterans Review, discussed the issue in an hour long interview on CBS affiliate WFNC, Fayetteville, N.C.
At the Vietnam Veterans parade in Chicago, Magruder paid for a continuous showing of the film on in-house television throughout his four day stay at the Americana Congress Hotel, reaching the thousands of Vietnam veterans who were staying there. The afternoon of the parade about 50 vets showed up with posters that read “Media and Campus Lied About Vietnam” on one side and “PBS Show the Film” on the other, and a protest was held in Grant Park. In addition, with every showing in Chicago and elsewhere, viewers were urged to use a number that Mr. Magruder had arranged for with Mr. Joseph Redota of the White House to call President Reagan and tell him what they thought about the film.
280 out of 314 stations finally showed the film. William Criswell, Station Manger of WUSI/TV, Olny, Illinois, wrote on Aug 26, 1986,”You should be pleased to know that this station has been at sword’s point with PBS powers-that-be for more than a year on the issue of bias. I have written to PBS President Bruce Christiansen and others protesting the one-sided presentation of America’s role in world politics. We aired Television’s Vietnam: The Impact of Media on Monday, August 18. It will be repeated Sat., Sept. 14.” A number of station managers wrote Mr. Magruder saying they were defying the ban and would show the film. Wrote Ruth Ann Barnes, Director of WNET/13 in New York,”This is to let you know we have decided to air the AIM program.”
Pat Buchanan, in a handwritten note from the White House said, “All the best with your new endeavor.” Anne Higgins, writing for President Reagan, said, “The President’s views on this subject are well known, and he will continue to express his concern that a flawed sense of our own history can lead to mistaken judgements about present policies as well as our future course.” Reagan had written to Charlton Heston about the film, “Great,.. something every American should see - but then we know TV will never help them to see it.” (AIM Report, March 1986). Mr. Magruder was happy to be able to write Reagan and tell him that the American people had now seen the film, that the cover-up had been defeated. General Westmoreland wrote, “I congratulate you on your success in the showing of the AIM film on PBS stations around the country.” (letter, Sept. 24, 1986
The Washington Inquirer of Sept. 25, 1986, said, “… the most dedicated in this endeavor (fighting the boycott) was Leonard Magruder, who had been campaigning on behalf of Vietnam veterans causes for the last six years. He quit his professional post to protest against the treatment of Vietnam vet. Magruder recently held a Washington press conference in which he accused the media of basing its analysis of events in Vietnam on a liberalism hostile to the American values of freedom and democracy and which created and sustained a disaster image of the Tet Offensive.” The United Press, The Washington Post, and The New York Times all sent reporters and photographers to this conference but did not report on the story when they heard that it was critical of the media performance in Vietnam.
Mr. Magruder said that while his successful national campaign to break the PBS boycott had been treated fairly in over two dozen local newspaper articles, radio, television newscasts and talk shows, the story had been suppressed at the national level. Word had gone out from PBS to contain the story. Local editors were appalled by this development. Obviously, a story about a private citizen spending thousands of dollars to successfully reverse a decision by PBS not to show a film about Vietnam was a national story. Some editors, such as Mr. Donald Gillem of The York Times-News, York, Nebraska, considered this highly unethical and made special appeals to representatives of the wire services to see that the story was carried nationally, but they were rejected. In Topeka and Kansas City the Associated Press refused to place mention of press conferences by Mr. Magruder on the day calender, which simply informs reporters of upcoming events. In other places, such as Lincoln, Nebraska, the wire services boycotted the news conferences that were held by Mr. Magruder. “The national media,” said Mr. Magruder, “went on an orgy of suppression over this issue.”
“The PBS campaign,” he said, “was our response to the betrayal by CBS of the Suffolk College Rally for returned Vietnam veterans. Millions of people now know how CBS lied about Vietnam. For millions of Vietnam vets Dan Rather now became the symbol of a liberal media that had lied about their efforts in Vietnam, and The CBS Evening News program slipped into third place apparently as vets turned it off.” Wrote Victor Goodpasture, a columnist for The Daily Kansan, the daily newspaper of the University of Kansas, “Mr. Magruder showed the documentary on campus last semester and also on Lawrence Cable Television. It ought to be shown to all journalism students and then discussed. It was this type of reporting that changed attitudes towards the war and eventually led to a Communist victory in South Vietnam. The media did a disservice to the American soldiers and the American people.”
In a lecture at the University of Kansas following the PBS campaign Mr. Magruder said, “Thuong Nhu Tang, Minister of Justice of the Viet Cong Provisional Revolutionary Government, said in an article in The New York Times of Oct. 21, 1982, that the Communist losses in the Tet Offensive were ‘so immense that they were unable to replace them with new recruits.’ They lost half their troops, some 40,000 dead (the U.S. lost 926). But the media portrayed this as a U.S. defeat and CBS said that the United States couldn’t hope to win the war.” The Daily Kansan, April 2, 1986.
This article may be reproduced in any form.
Founder/President, V.V.A.R.
Phone: 785-312-9303
Part 10, Vietnam and The Media
Part 10a, Vietnam and The Media
RETURN TO MAGRUDER ARTICLE INDEX
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