The Tet Offensive The American government had been telling their people that the communists were weakening and that they were now largely in control. What they saw through their television sets of the Tet Offensive contradicted this propaganda. Fifty million watched as the ARVN killed prisoners, innocent civilians, and South Vietnam was bombed. The US government was now unable to portray the war as clean, simple, and easily won as the media in South Vietnam …
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…each night. Images of the cruelty of war, and the exposure of false military propaganda were a new thing, Vietnam being the first war to be widely covered by television media. According to Marshall McLuhan, "Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the lounge rooms of America - not on the battlefields of America." It was the major contributing factor to the anti-war movement's growth.