The uncensored war

Summary

Throughline – "The Uncensored War" (June 9, 2026)
Podcast Summary by NPR, hosted by Rund Abdelfattah

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Episode Overview

This episode of Throughline explores how the Vietnam War reshaped America’s relationship with warfare—and the critical role journalists played in bringing the realities of combat into American living rooms. The episode looks closely at both the media’s unprecedented, uncensored access and the dilemmas, risks, and long-term impact this had, both on the reporting profession and on American society’s perception of war. Historian Susan Carruthers and journalist Frances “Frankie” Fitzgerald provide firsthand accounts and analysis, revealing how this era’s reporting changed history.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Ideals Tested by War

• Rund Abdelfattah introduces the theme (00:02): The Vietnam War forced a reckoning with American ideals—government power, realities of warfare, and the role of dissent.
• Early media (00:46–01:20): War footage and reporting entered daily American life, shifting both public perception and journalistic practice.

2. Vietnam War: Background and Escalation

• Historical primer (02:21–03:06): U.S. involvement had quietly grown over a decade, but most Americans paid little attention until the Gulf of Tonkin incident (03:14–03:29).
• The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (03:29–03:54): Enabled escalation without a formal declaration of war, increasing troop deployments and public scrutiny.

3. The Media’s Evolving Role

• Susan Carruthers on media focus (02:56, 05:02): Most US media coverage centered on American soldiers; Vietnamese people’s voices were almost absent.
  • Quote: “We might see Vietnamese peasants in obvious anguish, distressed, grieving. But mostly the Vietnamese who featured in American news broadcasts were silent.” — Susan Carruthers [05:02]
• Surge in reporting (04:20–04:52): Major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) and publications brought foreign correspondence from Vietnam into American homes.

4. Journalism on the Ground: Frankie Fitzgerald’s Story

• Frances “Frankie” Fitzgerald arrives in Vietnam (06:15–06:43): A rookie reporter, drawn by curiosity, becomes immersed in war reporting.
  • Quote: “I thought I would just spend a month there...but when I got there, I found I couldn’t leave.” — Frances Fitzgerald [06:43]
• Unique aspects of the Vietnam press environment (06:59–07:22): Unlike WWII, journalists in Vietnam were largely uncensored by the military and free to roam, albeit at their own risk.

5. Seeking the Vietnamese Perspective

• Fitzgerald’s reporting lens (07:32–08:18): She prioritized stories centering Vietnamese civilians.
  • Quote: “It just occurred to me that the thing that was missing was that the American high command knew nothing about the Vietnamese.” — Frances Fitzgerald [07:32]
• Obstacles in the field (08:37–09:19): Often met with suspicion and sometimes hostility from locals; witnessed refugees’ anger and despair at being displaced.
  • Memorable moment: Fitzgerald recounts being pelted with stones by refugees [09:13–09:22].
  • Quote: “If I had to live in such a place, I perhaps would be throwing stones too.” — Frances Fitzgerald [09:22]

6. Challenges of Fact-Checking and Editorial Bias

• Fact-checking conundrums (10:00–10:31): Difficult to verify information from Vietnamese sources; editorial policies often devalued non-American testimony.
  • Quote: “There was a rule that you couldn’t prove anything in a story by quoting a Vietnamese.” — Frances Fitzgerald [10:31]
• Self-censorship (10:53–11:30): Frankie sometimes omitted the most gruesome details, fearing readers wouldn’t believe them and lacking institutional backing.
  • Quote: “Because I felt that it wouldn’t be credible, really. I didn’t have an organization behind me. Everybody had this internal sensor which sort of said, you know, how far can I go with this?” — Frances Fitzgerald [11:30]

7. Media Impact on Public Opinion

• The power and limits of journalism (11:52–13:00): Reporting brought the war’s brutality into American homes, fueling antiwar sentiment and shifting public consciousness.
  • Quote: “The war would appear each day compressed between advertisements and confined to a small space in the living room. The explosion of bombs and the cries of the wounded would become the background accompaniment to dinner.” — Narration/Descriptive Voice [12:17]
• Fitzgerald’s landmark reporting (12:31–13:00): Her New Yorker articles became the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Fire in the Lake, considered a “first draft of history.”

8. The Tet Offensive—Turning Point

• Tet Offensive (13:35–14:00): While a tactical victory for US forces, the optics and media images devastated public support.
  • Memorable moment: Iconic images—pistol executions, bloody embassies—galvanized antiwar feeling [14:00].
• Changing editorial norms (14:27–14:53): As consensus in Washington eroded, editors permitted more unsparing coverage.
  • Quote: “Editors are more willing to sort of push the boundaries of the sayable, the showable.” — Susan Carruthers [14:29]

9. Walter Cronkite’s Influence

• Cronkite’s broadcast after the Tet Offensive (15:00–15:30): Famous for his sober conclusion that the war would end in a stalemate—not victory.
  • Quote: “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.” — Walter Cronkite [14:53]
  • President Johnson reportedly said: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” [15:30]
• Within weeks, Johnson announced he would not run for re-election.

10. Legacy of the "Uncensored War"

• Enduring change (15:46–16:54): The Vietnam War came to be called “the uncensored war.” Over 60 journalists died; their work redefined the boundaries and responsibilities of war reporting.
  • Quote: “The Vietnam War came to be known as the uncensored war, forever changing the way Americans see, understand and engage with the story of war.” — Rund Abdelfattah [16:39]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “We might see Vietnamese peasants... But mostly the Vietnamese who featured in American news broadcasts were silent.”
  — Susan Carruthers [05:02]
• “I found I couldn’t leave. I mean, I’d never seen a war before, of course, and it was all too fascinating.”
  — Frances Fitzgerald [06:43]
• “If I had to live in such a place, I perhaps would be throwing stones too.”
  — Frances Fitzgerald [09:22]
• “There was a rule that you couldn’t prove anything in a story by quoting a Vietnamese.”
  — Frances Fitzgerald [10:31]
• “Because I felt that it wouldn’t be credible, really... Everybody had this internal sensor which sort of said, you know, how far can I go with this?”
  — Frances Fitzgerald [11:30]
• “To one people, the war would appear each day compressed between advertisements and confined to a small space in the living room...”
  — Narration/Descriptive Voice [12:17]
• “Editors are more willing to sort of push the boundaries of the sayable, the showable.”
  — Susan Carruthers [14:29]
• “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.”
  — Walter Cronkite [14:53]
• “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”
  — Narrator [15:30]
• “The Vietnam War came to be known as the uncensored war, forever changing the way Americans see, understand and engage with the story of war.”
  — Rund Abdelfattah [16:39]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:02] – Introduction: American ideals during Vietnam
• [02:21–03:06] – Context: How America’s involvement escalated
• [04:20–05:21] – Media landscape and the American lens
• [06:15–07:22] – Frances Fitzgerald’s entry to Vietnam and her mission
• [09:00–09:22] – Confronting local hostility and empathy for refugees
• [10:00–11:30] – Fact-checking struggles and editorial self-censorship
• [12:31–13:00] – Reporting’s influence, antiwar movement, Fire in the Lake
• [14:00–14:53] – The Tet Offensive and editorial change
• [15:00–15:30] – Walter Cronkite and the public opinion tipping point
• [15:46–16:54] – The legacy of Vietnam as “the uncensored war"

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Conclusion

This episode masterfully wove stories and analysis to trace how Vietnam transformed both journalism and democracy itself. By showing uncensored images and stories, journalists forced the nation to confront war’s truths. But the episode also honestly explored the limits and internalized restraints even in this “uncensored war,” revealing profound dilemmas about whose stories are believed and who gets to shape the official record.

Transcript

[Rund Abdelfattah]

This is America in Pursuit, a limited run series from NPR and Throughline. I'm Rund Abdelfattah. Each week we bring you stories about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the US that began 250 years ago. Since these words were first penned, the vision of America has been determined by people testing these ideals against the realities of everyday life. And in the mid to late 20th century, the Vietnam War put those ideals to the test. The war forced Americans to confront questions about governmental power, the realities of warfare, and what happens to democracy when citizens disagree with their leadership.

[Narrator/Archive Audio (e.g., Walter Cronkite)]

This is what the war in Vietnam is all about. American soldiers hiking their way through the sweaty jungles of South Vietnam, searching for an elusive enemy.

[Susan Carruthers]

And of course, by 1967, 1968 is a staple of the nightly news on television.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

The war entered the homes of Americans through televisions, newspapers and radio. Images of what was actually happening in Vietnam changed the way Americans thought of and engaged with the war. And it changed the way the story of war was told.

[Susan Carruthers]

We might see Vietnamese peasants in obvious anguish, distressed, grieving. But mostly the Vietnamese who featured in American news broadcasts were silent.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Today on the show, the Vietnam War, what happened in Vietnam and how it changed America's relationship with war and the responsibility of journalists on the ground. That's coming up after a quick break.

[Narrator/Archive Audio (e.g., Walter Cronkite)]

War in South Vietnam, an ugly war in a far off place to which the United States is deeply committed.

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

It's 1964. U.S. military advisors have already been in Vietnam for over a decade.

[Narrator/Archive Audio (e.g., Walter Cronkite)]

By the spring of 1964, the Viet Cong had reached a strength of an estimated 60,000 troops and controlled nearly 68% of South Vietnam's villages and ambulance.

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

Successive US administrations said they were in Vietnam to prevent communism from spreading throughout Southeast Asia. And things weren't going well. But most Americans weren't paying much attention to the conflict.

[Susan Carruthers]

This is a war that begins in a very sort of slow way that initially was largely ignored.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

This is Susan Carruthers, historian at the University of Warwick and author of the book the Media at War.

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

Jim Crow, political assassinations, voting rights, those domestic issues were much more top of mind.

[Narrator/Archive Audio (e.g., Walter Cronkite)]

But then, on the night of August 4, 1964, President Johnson appeared on national television. Renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin.

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

Following a disputed incident in the Gulf of Tonkin involving an exchange of fire between US And North Vietnamese ships, Congress, with near unanimous support in the House and Senate, then passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized President Lyndon Johnson to escalate military involvement in Vietnam without a formal declaration of war. And suddenly the draft was ramped up,

[Susan Carruthers]

and more and more thousands of American men are sent there.

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

Which led more Americans to ask questions about the war. And news outlets responded, this is what

[Narrator/Archive Audio (e.g., Walter Cronkite)]

the war in Vietnam is all about. American soldiers hiking their way through the sweaty jungles of South Vietnam, searching for an elusive enemy.

[Susan Carruthers]

And of course, by 1967, 1968 is a staple of the nightly news on television.

[Narrator/Archive Audio (e.g., Walter Cronkite)]

It first appeared that the Marines had

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

been sniped at and that a few houses were made to pay. Film reels would be flown to Tokyo for quick editing and developing and then flown to the U.S. there were three main main networks broadcasting news from Vietnam. ABC, NBC, and CBS. And the big publications like the New York Times and Time magazine also sent the reporters there.

[Narrator/Archive Audio (e.g., Walter Cronkite)]

Blue didn't want to come to Vietnam, and he'd much rather be a businessman than a soldier. But right now, he's in charge of the lives of 21 men.

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

Most of the reporting focused on the US perspective, American soldiers, policy, military strategy.

[Susan Carruthers]

We might see Vietnamese peasants in obvious anguish, distressed, grieving. But mostly the Vietnamese who featured in American news broadcasts were silent.

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

A flurry of alternative and international media outlets were also reporting from Vietnam. Many staff correspondents were headquartered in Saigon.

[Narrator/Archive Audio (e.g., Walter Cronkite)]

The full fury of the war has scarcely touched Saigon. It attracts visitors, gis on leave, and even American tourists anxious for a feel of the war.

[Frances 'Frankie' Fitzgerald]

I remember the day after I got there, I was asked to a party on top of the roof of the best hotel, the Carabel. There was roses and champagne and all kinds of wonderful things. You'd think you were at home, you know, but then over the edge of the parapet, you could see these flares coming up. And the question was whether it was incoming or outgoing. You would never know until it happened.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

This is Frances Fitzgerald. She goes by Frankie. In 1966, Frankie flew to Vietnam sort of on a whim. She was 26, from a wealthy family and curious about the world. So she decided to take a break from her local reporting job in New York to travel to Southeast Asia, wanting to see the place where her father had deployed during World War II. She went to Thailand, Laos, and eventually landed in Vietnam.

[Frances 'Frankie' Fitzgerald]

I thought I would just spend a month there, do an article or two, pay my airfare back. But when I got there, I found I couldn't leave. I mean, I'd never seen a war before, of course, and it was all too fascinating.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Unlike in previous conflicts like World War II, the US military made a conscious decision not to formally censor journalists, they saw Vietnam as more of a limited conflict, not a full scale war.

[Narration/Descriptive Voice]

Every evening, a girl on spindle heels picks her way over the barrier of rotting fruit and onto the sidewalk.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Frankie arrived with a still film camera and a typewriter she'd packed into her suitcase. And as a freelance journalist, she could pretty much report whatever stories she wanted.

[Frances 'Frankie' Fitzgerald]

It just occurred to me that the thing that was missing was that the American high command knew nothing about the Vietnamese.

[Narration/Descriptive Voice]

Behind her, the alleyway carpeted with mud, winds back past the facade of new houses into a maze of thatched huts and tin roofed shacks called Bui Fat. One of the oldest of the refugee quarters.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

She got articles printed in the Village Voice, the Atlantic, the New York Review of Books, and the New York Times Magazine centering the Vietnamese perspective. So walk me through, like, how did you actually go about getting, getting that perspective? Because I'm assuming you didn't speak Vietnamese.

[Frances 'Frankie' Fitzgerald]

Well, I found, I mean, I found several interpreters along the way that wasn't hard to do because people wanted to do that. You make a lot of money that way.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

And how would you know if someone was a good interpreter if you don't speak Vietnamese?

[Frances 'Frankie' Fitzgerald]

I could feel it.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Frankie would travel around the South Vietnamese countryside with her interpreter, hoping to connect with people. But she wasn't always welcomed with open arms.

[Narration/Descriptive Voice]

Americans do not normally walk through the slums, not the real slums like those in the outlying areas.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

She remembers going into a community where refugees were living in makeshift homes built on planks atop a marsh.

[Frances 'Frankie' Fitzgerald]

They were angry at being displaced from their villages and put in this marsh,

[Narration/Descriptive Voice]

gigantic sewers, lakes full of stagnant filth.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

And suddenly a pebble sails out and

[Narration/Descriptive Voice]

falls gently on the stranger's back. It is followed by a hail of stones.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

She began getting pelted with stones.

[Frances 'Frankie' Fitzgerald]

I was sort of offended by it in the sense that I thought, what have I done? But I could very well understand if I had to live in such a place, I perhaps would be throwing stones too.

[Narration/Descriptive Voice]

These refugees lose their lands, their families, their ancestral homes, and the structure of their lives.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Frankie says the key to finally connecting with people was just continuing to show up.

[Frances 'Frankie' Fitzgerald]

They would realize that you were not going to come and blow up the village.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

How did you approached fact checking either things that the local Vietnamese people were telling you or the things that the US military or the Vietnamese local police were telling you.

[Frances 'Frankie' Fitzgerald]

Oh, sometimes it was absolutely impossible. You just have to do the best you could. Find other sources that said the same thing. I think we're given certain Leeway by our editors. There was a rule that you couldn't prove anything in a story by quoting a Vietnamese.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Wow. So it was pretty explicit that if you. If your source was a Vietnamese person versus an American commander, let's say, yeah, the two statements are not equal, not equal, not equal. And there were times when she felt the reality she was witnessing would be too unbelievable to her readers.

[Frances 'Frankie' Fitzgerald]

I went to see the civilian hospital and then, you know, I see all these Vietnamese on beds outside their rooms with terrible burns which they had from napalm. You know, to describe it right here is almost impossible for me. It was so awful, I didn't know what to do. I reported some of it, but just not the really gruesome details.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Why did you leave the most gruesome details out, do you think?

[Frances 'Frankie' Fitzgerald]

Well, because I felt that it wouldn't be credible, really. I didn't have an organization behind me. Everybody had this internal sensor which sort of said, you know, how far can I go with this?

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Is journalism's role to push the conversation if that's where the truth is leading? Or is it to meet people where they are until they're ready to hear the sort of bigger ecstatic truth?

[Frances 'Frankie' Fitzgerald]

Well, it's probably to do the first, but at the expense of not having it printed at all.

[Narration/Descriptive Voice]

To one people, the war would appear each day compressed between advertisements and confined to a small space in the living room. The explosion of bombs and the cries of the wounded would become the background accompaniment to dinner.

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

In 1972, Frankie published a series of articles in the New Yorker detailing her years of reporting from Vietnam that were then turned into a book called Fire in the Lake, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

[Narration/Descriptive Voice]

For the other people, the war would come one day out of a clear blue sky. In a few minutes it would be over. The bombs released by an invisible pilot with incomprehensible intentions would leave only the debris and the dead behind.

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

It was the first major book by an American profiling Vietnam, its history, its people, the impact of the war on them. At the time, Franke described the book as a, quote, first draft of history. Frankie's book was part of a chorus of reporting that had been fueling a growing anti war movement for years.

[Susan Carruthers]

So many Americans are not only opposed to the war, but vehemently out on

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

the streets, public opinion had dramatically begun to shift. Going into 1968, US troop numbers were at an all time high. And then came the Tet Offensive. Communist forces swept through more than 100 South Vietnamese cities, towns and villages. American and South Vietnamese troops fought them back and the north suffered huge losses.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

It was militarily a win for the US but optically, it was a resounding defeat. Reporters sent back photos that shook the American public. In one, a South Vietnamese soldier stands over a North Vietnamese prisoner, pistol in hand, carrying out an execution. Another shows bloodstains, bullet holes and dead bodies. At the US Embassy, Susan Carruthers says,

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

for much of the war in Vietnam,

[Susan Carruthers]

the news media was absolute beholden to this Cold War template that the United States was there to try to prop up beleaguered South Vietnam. And that changes only really after the consensus on Capitol Hill itself has started to break down. Editors are more willing to sort of push the boundaries of the sayable, the showable.

[Narrator/Archive Audio (e.g., Walter Cronkite)]

It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

About a month after the Tet Offensive, Walter Cronkite, the anchorman for CBS Evening News, known then as the most trusted man in America, recorded this broadcast after a trip to Vietnam.

[Narrator/Archive Audio (e.g., Walter Cronkite)]

It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then is will be to negotiate not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

After hearing this broadcast, President Johnson reportedly said, if I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America. And within weeks, he decided to not run for reelection.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

The war continued for another seven years, until 1975, when the US withdrew the last of its combat troops. Journalists were credited with and blamed for ending the war. They had risked life and limb, often without the safety of a military escort, to report the truth. More than 60 journalists paid the ultimate price for it. The Vietnam War came to be known as the uncensored war, forever changing the way Americans see, understand and engage with the story of war. That's it for this week's episode of America in Pursuit. If you want to hear the full episode featuring the experiences of war reporters, check out from the front lines. And be sure to join us next week when we meet the ultimate superhero. He's not someone who has always known power, so he is someone who knows

[Narrator/Archive Audio (e.g., Walter Cronkite)]

what it is like to be the one getting sand kicked in their face.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

He's on the side of the little guy.

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

Time for Captain America to go to work.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Bam. Captain America and what his story tells us about being American today. That's next week. Don't miss it. This episode was produced by Kiana Mohadam and edited by Christina Kim with help from the Throughline production team. Music by Ramtin Adabloui and his band Drop Electric. Special thanks to Julie Cain, Irene Noguchi, Beth Donovan, Casey Miner and Lindsay McKenna. I'm Rend Abdul Fattah.

[Narrator/Host or Historical Context Voice]

Thanks for listening.