The Reporting of The Vietnam War |
||
| The Associated Press sent me to South Vietnam in the summer of 1962 to report on what was then a small war. But a much bigger story was waiting for me in Vietnam, then a divided country, with a communist north and a democratic south, a country at the heart of the struggle of the cold war -- the struggle between Communism and the West. I did learn to be a war reporter eventually, joining news colleagues like Nick Turner of Reuters, for example, to talk with United States military advisors on one trip. At that time there were only 8000 Americans in the whole of South Vietnam. But soon enough, political chaos in the streets of South Vietnam's cities became more important than the war. I was horrified, but I still took a picture of a Buddhist monk deliberately burning himself to death at a traffic intersection of a Saigon street on October 5, 1963. He just stepped out of a taxi, poured gasoline on himself from a rubber bag, and lit a match. We were there because we had been told it would be the location of a student demonstration. |
An editorial in the New York Herald Tribune newspaper the next day asked why I did not try to stop the monk from committing suicide. My response was, I'm a reporter not a fire engine – or, what we call a guardian angel, someone who helps others in time of trouble. This monk's death was not an accident, but a dramatic political statement against the South Vietnamese government. It was not for me, a reporter, to directly interfere in the course of history. But we reporters were dragged into the political struggle, anyway. I was beaten up by plain clothes police at a Buddhist rally in the streets against the government. The police punched me, bloodied my face, and threw me to the ground. They were trying to force me and the other reporters to leave. I was the smallest target. My New York Times colleague, David Halberstam, a big man, came to my rescue. But afterwards I was arrested with my AP bureau chief Malcolm Browne, and threatened with serious charges. The American Embassy intervened and we were released after 12 hours in jail. And then we went right back to talk to the Buddhist monks, to interview them and get their stories. The story had to come before safety. |
|
| RETURN TO BIO | NEXT PAGE  |
|
