Editing My Lai massacre (section)

==Media coverage==
A photographer and a reporter from the 11th Brigade Information Office were attached to Task Force Barker and landed with Charlie Company in Sơn Mỹ on 16 March 1968. Neither the ''Americal News Sheet'' published 17 March 1968, nor the ''Trident'', 11th Infantry Brigade newsletter from 22 March 1968, reported the deaths of noncombatants in Mỹ Lai. The ''[[Stars and Stripes (newspaper)|Stars and Stripes]]'' published a laudatory piece, "U.S. troops Surrounds Red, Kill 128", on March 18.<ref>U.S. troops Surrounds Red, Kill 128. ''Pacific Star and Stripes'' (Three Star edition), 18 March 1969.</ref>

On 12 April 1968, the ''Trident'' wrote, "The most punishing operations undertaken by the brigade in Operation Muscatine's area involved three separate raids into the village and vicinity of My Lai, which cost the VC 276 killed".<ref>[http://www.hill4-11.org/trident/TRI680412.pdf "Muscatine bats 1000"], ''Trident, 11th Infantry Brigade'', Volume 1, Number 10, 12 April 1968.</ref> On 4 April 1968, the information office of the 11th Brigade issued a press-release, ''Recent Operations in Pinkville,'' without reporting mass casualties among civilians.<ref>Roberts, Jay A. ''Recent Operations in Pinkville''. Press-Release No. 112–68–75, Information office, 11th Infantry Brigade, 4 April 1968.</ref> Subsequent criminal investigation found that "Both individuals failed to report what they had seen, the reporter wrote a false and misleading account of the operation, and the photographer withheld and suppressed from proper authorities the photographic evidence of atrocities he had obtained."<ref>[http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/summary_rpt.html Summary of Peers's Report], umkc.edu; accessed 23 February 2018.</ref>

{{Quote box|width=246px|align=right|quote=Vietnam was an atrocity from the get-go... There were hundreds of My Lais. You got your card punched by the numbers of bodies you counted.|source= — [[David H. Hackworth]]<ref>John Kifner, [https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/28/us/report-on-brutal-vietnam-campaign-stirs-memories.html?src=pm&pagewanted=2 "Report on Brutal Vietnam Campaign Stirs Memories"], ''The New York Times'', 28 December 2003.</ref>}}

The first reporting of the Mỹ Lai massacre appeared in the American media after Fort Benning issued a press release related to the charges pressed against Lieutenant William Calley. This was issued on 5 September 1969.<ref>Belknap, Michael R. (2002). ''The Vietnam War on Trial. The My Lai Massacre and the Court-Martial of Lieutenant Calley''. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas.<!-- ISSN/ISBN needed --></ref>

Consequently, [[NBC]] aired on 10 September 1969 a segment in the ''[[Huntley-Brinkley Report]]'' which reported the killings of numerous civilians in South Vietnam. Following that, Ronald Ridenhour decided to disobey the Army's order to withhold the information from the media. He approached reporter Ben Cole of the ''Phoenix Republic'', who chose not to handle the scoop. Charles Black from the ''[[Ledger-Enquirer|Columbus Enquirer]]'' uncovered the story on his own but also decided to put it on hold. Two major national news press outlets—''The New York Times'' and ''[[The Washington Post]]''—received some tips with partial information but did not act on them.<ref>Toppe, Jana. [http://www.jfki.fu-berlin.de/academics/SummerSchool/Dateien2011/Papers/meigs_toppe.pdf "Catering to the silent majority: The Mỹ Lai massacre as a media challenge"]. Free University of Berlin, 10 October 2011.</ref>

{{external media
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| image1 = {{center|1=Front page of [http://media.cleveland.com/plain-dealer/photo/2009/11/my-lai-page-a1---half-page-15ec9996b53962ae.gif ''The Plain Dealer'' scoop on the Mỹ Lai massacre], 20 November 1969}}}}

Ridenhour called Seymour Hersh on 22 October 1969. The freelance investigative journalist conducted an independent inquiry, and published to break the wall of silence that was surrounding the Mỹ Lai massacre. Hersh initially tried to sell the story to ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' and ''[[Look (American magazine)|Look]]'' magazines; both turned it down. Hersh went to the small, Washington-based [[Dispatch News Service]], which sent it to fifty major American newspapers; thirty accepted it for publication.<ref>Hersh, Seymour M. ''Mỹ Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and its Aftermath''. New York: Random House, 1970.<!-- ISSN/ISBN needed --></ref> ''New York Times'' reporter [[Henry Kamm]] investigated further and found several survivors of the Mỹ Lai massacre in South Vietnam. He estimated the number of civilians killed as 567.<ref>Kamm, Henry. [https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0316.html#article "Vietnamese Say G.I.'s Slew 567 in Town"], ''The New York Times'', 17 November 1969.</ref>

Next, Ben Cole published an article about Ronald Ridenhour, a helicopter gunner and an Army [[whistleblower]], who was among the first who started to uncover the truth about the Mỹ Lai massacre. Haeberle contacted [[Joe Eszterhas|Joseph Eszterhas]] of ''The Plain Dealer'', which then published Haeberle's grisly images of the dead bodies of old men, women, and children on 20 November 1969.<ref name="PlainDealer"/> ''Time Magazine''{{'s}} article on 28 November 1969 and in ''Life'' magazine on 5 December 1969, both of which included Haeberle's photos,<ref>"The massacre at Mỹ Lai", ''Life'', Vol. 67, No. 23, 5 December 1969.</ref> finally brought Mỹ Lai to the fore of the public debate about Vietnam War.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840403,00.html |title=Nation: The My Lai Massacre |magazine=Time |date=28 November 1969 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071013204108/http://time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C840403%2C00.html |archive-date=13 October 2007|url-status=dead}}</ref>

[[Richard Strout|Richard L. Strout]], the ''[[Christian Science Monitor]]'' political commentator, wrote: "American press self-censorship thwarted Mr. Ridenhour's disclosures for a year. 'No one wanted to go into it', his agent said of telegrams sent to ''Life'', ''Look'', and ''Newsweek'' magazines outlining allegations."<ref>''Christian Science Monitor'', 24 November 1969.</ref>

Afterward, interviews and stories connected to the Mỹ Lai massacre started to appear regularly in the American and international press.<ref name="Allison"/>{{sfn|Oliver|2006}}

Concluding an ABC television news broadcast, [[News presenter|anchorman]] Frank Reynolds said to his audience that, as a consequence of the allegations, "our spirit as a people is scarred". The massacre, he believed, offered "the most compelling argument yet advanced for America to end its involvement in Vietnam, not alone because of what the war is doing to the Vietnamese or to our reputation abroad, but because of what it is doing to us".<ref name="Oliver 2003 247–268"/>