Politics & Power Quote by Bruce Jackson

Blaming the media for “turning” Americans against Vietnam is the kind of institutional alibi that outlives the war itself. Jackson’s phrasing doesn’t just report a grievance; it exposes a reflex: when a conflict collapses in legitimacy, power prefers to indict the messenger rather than the mission. The verb “still” is the tell. This isn’t a historical footnote but a continuing posture, a way the military narrates defeat without admitting misjudgment, deception, or moral cost.

The line’s subtext is about control of perception. “Stories and images” gestures to the era’s defining shift: Vietnam was the first American war consumed nightly, in color, with body bags and burning villages interrupting dinner. The accusation implies that public support is a default setting, and that only distortion - rather than mounting casualties, unclear objectives, the draft, or official credibility gaps - could have produced dissent. That’s not analysis; it’s an emotional defense mechanism that preserves authority.

Context matters: after the Pentagon Papers and the slow-motion erosion of trust, “the media lost Vietnam” became a convenient myth. It flattens a complex antiwar movement into a single villain and converts journalism into sabotage. Jackson, as a public servant, is pointing to how bureaucracies manage accountability: by relocating failure onto an external actor with less institutional power. The quote also foreshadows a recurring American pattern - every subsequent war comes with a preemptive fight over narrative, and an anxiety that images, once seen, can’t be un-seen.