|
Vietnam THE MEDIA
Although an official description of the press, offered by the
Sixth National Party Congress, defines the media's role as being
"the voice of the party and of the masses," and identifies its
task as being to "propagate the party's lines and policies," as
well as to report and analyze the news, the Vietnamese press is
much more a medium for educating the public and filtering
information, than for reporting news. It is controlled by the VCP
Central Committee's Propaganda and Training Department in
accordance with guidelines established by the Ministry of
Culture, and both agencies act to ensure that it reflects the
policies and positions of the party. In mid-1987, however, there
emerged increasing evidence within the media that a movement
might be underway to change the character of the press. Articles
stressing the importance of investigative reporting, calling for
more journalistic freedom to report accurately, and defending the
right of the people to be heard, appeared in many of the leading
newspapers. The movement appeared to be led by a small but
influential group of journalists seeking to make the press more
assertive by emphasizing accurate reporting and a more balanced
reflection of public opinion.
In the late 1980s, there were approximately 350 national or
local newspapers, magazines, journals, news bulletins, and
newsletters published in Vietnam. Some local newspapers were
published in the languages of tribal minorities and one, in Ho
Chi Minh City, was published in Chinese. In addition, there were
a small number of publications intended for distribution outside
Vietnam.
The national press included publications intended for the
general public (e.g. Tap Chi Cong San, Communist Review)
as well as those aimed at specific audiences, such as women
(Phu Nu Vietnam, Vietnamese Women) or trade union members
(Tap Chi Cong Doan, Trade Union Review). Separate journals
and newspapers covered sports, culture, economics, social
sciences, the military, and science and technology. Each of the
thirty-six provinces and the three autonomous municipalities, as
well as the special zone, published a newspaper and one or more
journals dealing with culture, education, and science and
technology. Local newspapers covered local events and did not
compete with national publications.
Party control of the press ensured the political correctness
of a story and determined in which publication it would appear.
Rarely was the same story covered in more than one national
newspaper or magazine. Nhan Dan (People's Daily)--the VCP
daily--and Quan Doi Nhan Dan (People's Army)--the armed
forces daily--were normally limited to national and international
stories. Articles on subjects like sports or art appeared in
newspapers or journals devoted to those subjects. Nhan
Dan, the leading national newspaper and the official organ of
the VCP Central Committee, began publication in 1951. By 1987, as
a four-page daily reporting domestic and international news, it
published the full texts of speeches and articles by party and
government leaders and included feature articles on the
government, party, culture, and economy. Quan Doi Nhan
Dan, published daily except Sunday by PAVN, was also four
pages in length and included international and national news, but
with an emphasis on military activities and training.
The principal national magazine was Tap Chi Cong San
(Communist Review), a monthly journal. Formerly called Hoc
Tap (Studies), its name was changed in January 1977, after
the Fourth Party Congress. It was a theoretical and political
journal and was considered to be the voice of the VCP. In 1987
its table of contents was published for international
dissemination in English, French, Spanish, and Russian.
Publications intended specifically for foreign audiences in
the 1980s were Vietnam Courier, in English and French--a
monthly with articles on current events as well as Vietnamese
culture and history; Vietnam, in Vietnamese, Lao,
Cambodian, Russian, English, French, and Spanish--a monthly with
pictorial essays on all aspects of Vietnamese life; Vietnam
Foreign Trade, in English; Vietnam Social Sciences, in
English, French, and Russian; Vietnam Youth, in English
and French; Vietnamese Scientific and Technical Abstracts,
in English; Vietnamese Studies, in English and French;
Vietnamese Trade Unions, in English, French, and Spanish;
Women of Vietnam, in English and French; and Informado
El Vjetnamio (Information on Vietnam) in Esperanto.
The country's wire service, the Vietnam News Agency (VNA),
was the principal source of domestic and international news for
the nation's domestic and international media in 1987. It
published, on a daily basis, a twelve-to-sixteen-page English-
language compendium, Vietnam News Agency, which provided
standard press-service coverage of the day's news events.
By 1986 international shortwave news reports were broadcast
by the Voice of Vietnam in eleven languages (Cambodian, Chinese--
both Mandarin and Cantonese, English, French, Indonesian,
Japanese, Lao, Russian, Spanish, and Thai) as well as Vietnamese.
The broadcast sites for these programs included five in Hanoi and
fifteen in other locations throughout the country. Transmissions
reached neighboring Southeast Asian countries and regions as
distant as Latin America, Africa, and Europe. Domestic service
was provided from fifty-one AM transmission sites, of which five
were located in Hanoi, three in Ho Chi Minh City, and the rest in
other cities and districts. In addition an FM station was located
in Ho Chi Minh City, and an unspecified number of other FM
stations were located elsewhere in Vietnam.
The Central Television network was created in 1970. By the
mid-1980s, five channels were known to broadcast from twenty-one
transmission sites in Vietnam. Viewers were served by two
channels in Hanoi, one in Ho Chi Minh City and one in Da Nang;
Hue, Can Tho, and Qui Nhon were served by another channel. There
may have been broadcasts from Nha Trang and Vinh as well.
Television Vietnam offered programs in color and in black and
white. Black and white daily national programming was broadcast
from Hanoi, on Monday through Friday, for ninety minutes a day
and, on Saturday and Sunday, for three hours a day.
* * *
Recent books on the political process in Vietnam are
comparatively few in number, and even fewer detail the structure
and the inner workings of the party and the government.
Nevertheless, extremely informative works on Vietnamese Communist
rule include Vietnam Since the Fall of Saigon and
Vietnam: Nation in Revolution, by William Duiker, and
Vietnamese Communism in Comparative Perspective, the
assembled views of a number of leading Vietnam scholars, edited
by William Turley. Nguyen Van Canh's Vietnam Under Communism,
1975-1982 is useful because of its discussion of party and
government structure both at the national and local level.
A legal discussion of the 1980 Constitution is provided in
Chin Kim's article on "Recent Developments in the Constitutions
of Asian
Marxist-Socialist States." Party congresses are discussed in
Ralph Smith's "Vietnam's Fourth Party Congress," Carlyle Thayer's
"Development Strategies in Vietnam: The Fourth National Congress
of the Vietnam Communist Party," An Tai Sung's "The All-Vietnam
National Assembly: Significant Developments," and Thai Quang
Trung's "The Fifth Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party."
Vietnam's foreign relations, particularly the war in Cambodia
and the Sino-Vietnamese conflict, have prompted a number of
useful books and articles. First among these on the subject of
the war in Cambodia is Nayan Chanda's Brother Enemy, a
work also useful for its discussion of postwar United States-
Vietnamese relations. The Third Indochina Conflict, edited
by David Elliott, includes a number of informative chapters on
the subject. The Chinese-Vietnamese border war in 1979 is
discussed in a historical context in G.D. Loescher's "The
Sino-Vietnamese Conflict in Recent Historical Perspective," and
in Eugene Lawson's The Sino-Vietnamese Conflict. Vietnam's
relations with Southeast Asia are covered in David Elliott's
"Vietnam in Asia: Strategy and Diplomacy in a New Context," and
Soviet-Vietnamese relations are discussed in Robert Horn's
"Soviet-Vietnamese Relations and the Future of Southeast Asia,"
Douglas Pike's "The USSR and Vietnam: Into the Swamp," and Leif
Rosenberger's "The Soviet-Vietnamese Alliance and Kampuchea."
An overview of Vietnam since the end of the Second Indochina
War is presented by Carlyle Thayer and David Marr in Vietnam
Since
1975--Two Views From Australia and by William Turley in
"Vietnam Since Reunification." Additional articles focusing on
Vietnam's domestic problems following unification include Carlyle
Thayer's "Vietnam's New Pragmatism," William Turley's "Hanoi's
Domestic Dilemmas," Stephen Young's "Unpopular Socialism in
United Vietnam" and "Vietnamese Marxism: Transition in Elite
Ideology," and Jayne Werner's "Socialist Development: The
Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in Vietnam."
To follow Vietnam's politics and government on a daily basis,
some of the most useful reference sources are the Daily
Report: Asia & Pacific, published by the Foreign Broadcast
Information Service, and Southeast Asia Report, published
by the Joint Publication Research Service. The Indochina
Chronology, a quarterly published by the Institute of East
Asian Studies, University of California at Berkeley, is also
invaluable. (For further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1987
|
