There were three reasons why mass media and the public opinion became against the war. The first is that the campaign of bombing Vietnam, that was elected as the easy option, resulted not as easy at all. For bombing North Vietnam was needed to build a big aerial base in Da Nung. When the bombardments started, to protect the base became needed. Then, in March 1965, 3500 marines disembarked in Da Nang. In April, thetotal of American soldiers in Vietnam increased to 82000. In June, 44 battalions were solicited. The 28th of July Johnson announced: “Today Ihave sent to Vietnam the aero-transport division and other specific forces that will increase our power of fight (…) I have sent 125.000 men immediately. Later, it is going to be needed additional forces, that are going to be send according to circumstances”.

As the number of Americans involved in the terrain´s defense and other combats were growing, the number of corpses and casualties increased.

The second reason because United States became against the war was the criticism of newspaper´s editorials and the tendentious presentation of the news. The American media became very biased in some cases; with more frequency, were cheated, deliberately and skillfully, or became cheated by themselves. A very spreaded photography of a “prisoner” thrown from an American helicopter was, in fact, a fake. The information about the American “tiger´s cage” in Con Son were inaccurate and exaggerated. Another broadcasted picture of a girl burned by napalm gave the impression that thousands of Vietnamese children were incinerated by American soldiers. The authentic photo, published a lot of times, of a young man being shot by one of the Vietnamese “allies” of United States, gave the impression that it was normal to execute captured Vietcong soldiers. When television’s cover became daily and intensive, it acted against American interests. It generated the idea that United States was fighting a war “without hopes”. The media not only scorned or diminish the importance of American successes, it also tend to convert the Vietcong and North Vietnamese´s faults in victories.

The falseness of the media reached a decisive point when they informed that Vietcong´s Tet´s offensive in January of 1968. By this time, the military situation was that Americans and their Vietnamese allies, after they established themselves strongly in all urban centers of the South, were gaining important victories in the camp.

Precisely during Tet´s affront occurred “the most serious episode of the American intervention in Vietnam” (as Life magazine reported the fact): the massacre of My Lai. In march 16th, 1968 the “Charlie” U.S. company to the village of My Lai. The company was under the orders of the young tenant Calley who received order of captain Medina to “neutralize the enemy, killing him”. In fact in My Lai lived few adults, many old people and a lot of children, all civilians. The first soldier that opened fire to the people was precisely the tenant Calley, who stimulated the company to do the same, 347 civilians lost their lives. By few months the massacre was kept in secret, but a soldier, Ronald Ridenhour, who had heard about it by his companions, wrote a letter to the US Congress; the letter fell in hands of the journalist Seymour Hersh, who started an investigation that made him won the Pullitzer prize. The atrocities committed by Vietcong most of the times were hidden by the media and centered it´s attention in the criminal actions of American army. The worst issue of the influence of the media was that even the politicians in Washington believed all what was published in the newspapers.

All this facts reported by the media provoked a critical analysis by American society about war, the people started to press government to stopped it; many human lives were lost plus the frustration of older people that their sons were sent to death caused main opposition to Vietnam war. The reaction against war grew rapidly in all the world. Even the Pope, Paul VI, made calls for peace.

An artificial dramatization of political events is the first step to a negative perception of the process, this is what happened with the public opinion about Vietnam. The media, as was perceived by the revision of the displayed facts in this article, modifies the perception and even the experience of the reader-spectator about political affairs. The mass media imposes conditions about socio-political decisions and actions selecting what they are going to show to the public. In United States precisely this is what is called foreign policy by NBC , that is that media determines foreign policy of the country.