Genres
Production Companies
Good Neighbor Productions
Dateline: Saigon
Lies, deception, and the dangerous search for truth
Overview
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.'
Key Crew
Director: Thomas D. Herman
Director of Photography: Randel Cole, Bestor Cram, Steve Keeny, Mark Bakker, Abdulkarim Sabham
Writer: Thomas D. Herman
Producer: Bestor Cram, Thomas D. Herman
Top Cast
Sam Waterston
Narrator (voice)
Neil Sheehan
Self
Peter Arnett
Self
Malcolm Browne
Self
Horst Faas
Self
David Halberstam
Self
Walter Cronkite
Self (archival footage)
