Frances Fitzgerald: Author of Fire In the Lake, Talks about Covering the Vietnam War

Frances Fitzgerald was 26 when she got the guts to go to Vietnam and cover the war as a freelance reporter.

Her Radcliffe education, where she studied Middle Eastern history, didn't really prepare her for understanding this war. But two years spent writing for the Sunday magazine of the Herald Tribune at least gave her some idea about magazine writing.

With that under her belt, off she went.

As an outsider, and a woman, she wasn't taken seriously at first but this allowed her to some degree of freedom since the US military thought she was harmless.

Her book about the war, Fire in Lake, won a Pulitzer Prize. She went on to cover other conflicts and countries including in Iran and Central America.

She believed that the US Military was off base because they thought Vietnam was about a war of ideology. A grand struggle between Western Democracy and Communism. When in fact it was a local war about nationalism. No matter what it was about the US Military believed its vast arsenal and power would defeat the local guerillas. They couldn't think that anyone could defeat them.

Clete Roberts, correspondent
Ian Masters, Producer, Director
Michael Rose, Producer
Haskell Wexler, Camera (along with others)
Susan Cope, Sound
Eric Vollmer, Coordinator
Anne Vermillion, Coordinator

Vietnam Reconsidered Conference
USC, 1983

WW29

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