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Vietnam coverage: Canadian vs. American

Broadcast Date: June 6, 1990

Knowlton Nash covered the complex and bloody Vietnam War for the CBC. Looking back in this 1990 radio clip, he reflects on the differences between American and Canadian coverage of Vietnam. Canadians provided "something different, special," such as big-picture reports on underlying issues, says Nash, while Americans concentrated on daily battle news. But he thinks this was more related to money than anything else. "We couldn't afford the daily satellite feeds that Americans used to send over their 'bang bang' material."

Vietnam coverage: Canadian vs. American

• The term "bang bang" is commonly used by foreign correspondents to mean action in a war zone.
• Knowlton Nash was a Washington, D.C., correspondent for the CBC during the 1960s. While there, he covered the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassination and the Vietnam War.
• Nash covered much of the Vietnam War from the U.S. But he did spend a short time in Vietnam working on a news special, arriving there in November of 1967.

• In his 1984 book History on the Run: The Trenchcoat Memoirs of a Foreign Correspondent, Nash writes about his time in Vietnam. He came away from the experience "with a deep affection for the average American front-line soldier, probably not a fashionable attitude. There were some thugs, madmen, and even murderers among the soldiers… and they got a lot of attention. But in my experience, they were certainly not representative of the average GI, who was just a scared kid trying to stay alive."

Vietnam coverage: Canadian vs. American

Medium: Radio

Program: Prime Time

Broadcast Date: June 6, 1990

Guest(s): Knowlton Nash

Duration: 9:35

Last updated:
Dec. 3, 2010