1968: The Global Revolutions

In December 1966, Harrison Salisbury, became the first American journalist to report from Hanoi, in North Vietnam. As assistant managing editor at the New York Times, and perhaps the most distinguished foreign correspondent of his era, his byline from the enemy’s capital sparked a scandal and a sensation. Conservative politicians and anonymous critics deluged him with abuse, while progressive commentators hailed his journalistic integrity. Touring damaged areas, Salisbury demolished government claims that American bombing operated with surgical precision on military targets. His dispatches portrayed a nation with a strong will to fight that showed no signs of defeatism or failing nerve. An eyewitness to the German Blitz against London more than twenty years earlier, Salisbury had experience in judging civilian morale. “It is my feeling, he concluded, “that the bombing has caused the country to acquire a spirit of national purpose or unity which it would not have otherwise … The people have a feeling of the mass participation in this war.”