New book studies anti-war veterans

The Daily Beacon: New book studies anti-war veterans

Mark Harmon, associate professor in journalism and electronic media, started an off-and-on, three-decade-long work after reading a Hunter S. Thompson book.

In Thompson's "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72," Harmon read about the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and he became fascinated by the group. Why didn't this get news coverage, he thought to himself.

What resulted was "Found, Featured, then Forgotten: U.S. Network TV News and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War," a new multimedia book published by UT Libraries' Newfound Press.

"Dr. Harmon's book is the Newfound Press' first true multimedia work," UT Libraries communications coordinator Martha Rudolph said. "Since the press is a peer-reviewed online imprint, readers get both an authoritative work and the added interest of interactive features, such as news broadcasts from the Vietnam era and interviews with veterans who protested the war. It's an exciting new work."

The Vietnam Veterans Against the War stood out to Harmon because there were so many involved in the group.

"Certainly there were other wars where there was some opposition, but this was a phenomenon," Harmon said.

And there was opposition to this opposition, as well.

"What made Vietnam Veterans Against the War important also was they were politically targeted," he said. "There were government prosecutors that were attempting to break up anti-war veterans. The Nixon Administration was obsessed with the group."

Harmon was specific in his aim for this work.

"Others have done a great job of telling the story of anti-war veterans," he said. "I wanted to tell the story of news coverage of anti-war veterans."

He found that many of the stigmas attached to the Vietnam War are false. He discovered three such common errors.

Firstly, Harmon said it is assumed that the people who led the opposition against the Vietnam War were upper-class elites.

Looking at the public opinion polling, Harmon discovered it was actually the lower class who were leading the charge against the war.

"When you look at it, that makes sense," he said. "Those were the people that had sons dying."

Secondly, Harmon also pointed out that, while people assume the press led the way in anti-Vietnam coverage, the opposite is true.

"The press got to anti-war stories rather late in the game and, really, almost had to be dragged to the story of anti-war veterans," he said.

Finally, Harmon said the outcome of the war is often blamed on the protests at home.

"It was lost because it was a badly chosen war, fought on poor reasoning," he said.

To access Harmon's new book, visit http://www.newfoundpress.utk.edu/pubs/harmon/.

Harmon thinks the multimedia format is where books of this type are going.

"I think this is going to become an increasing part of what books are, and I think that's good," he said. "It's not right for every topic, but it certainly worked for this one. I am very pleased that Newfound Press is here and is publishing these works."

The book features audio clips, video clips, Internet links, photographs and more.

"In terms of a range of source work, it definitely has that, everything from books to interviews to magazine articles to newspapers to items of databases and archives to audio and video clips," he said.

Besides correcting common errors about the Vietnam War, Harmon's joy in creating the book came from the "forgotten" aspect of its title.

"Telling the story of an under-appreciated group, that, I think, was the whole motivation of it," he said. "Here's a part of history that we're not telling."