Dateline: Saigon

"Lies, deception, and the dangerous search for truth"

How does a nation slip into war? Dateline-Saigon profiles the controversial reporting of five Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists -The New York Times' David Halberstam, the Associated Press' Malcolm Browne, Peter Arnett, and legendary photojournalist Horst Faas, and UPI's Neil Sheehan -- during the early years of the Vietnam War as President John F. Kennedy is secretly committing US troops to what is initially dismissed by some as 'a nice little war in a land of tigers and elephants.' 'When the government is telling the truth, reporters become a relatively unimportant conduit to what is happening,' Halberstam tells us. 'But when the government doesn't tell the truth, begins to twist the truth, hide the truth, then the journalist becomes involuntarily infinitely more important.'

Director: Thomas D. Herman

Cast

Sam Waterston

Narrator (voice)

Neil Sheehan

Self

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Peter Arnett

Self

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Malcolm Browne

Self

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Horst Faas

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David Halberstam

Self

Walter Cronkite

Self (archival footage)