ABSTRACT
As the presidential election of 1968 approached, it was clear that the growing debate over Vietnam would reach a critical stage. Four years earlier, Lyndon Johnson had assured the electorate that 'I have not thought we were ready for American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys'. Tet is often remembered as the classic example of the decisive role of the media in the television age. CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, for example, traveled to Vietnam to report personally on the offensive, an extraordinary gesture in an age when anchors rarely left the studio except for ceremonial events like conventions and funerals and certainly were never seen crouching in the field wearing steel helmets, as Cronkite was during Tet. Tet was, in crucial ways, the political turning point. Journalists generally accepted the American military's claim that Tet was an American victory.
