The media played a critical role in the self-criticism and criticism campaign. First, it served a relegitimation function by conveying the regime's "mea culpa" over its shortcomings and its efforts to redress them, and by giving the public an opportunity to be involved in this process. Secondly, it was a vehicle for turning the public against individual cadres and hence rebuilding confidence in the regime by showing that it was prepared to deal with the excesses of its staff. Finally, it provided a feedback mechanism through which the regime could identify issues of greatest concern to the populace.
64 Hanoi Domestic Service, 1100 gmt, 24 May 1986 (FBIS 29.5.86), p. K 9. 65 Hanoi Domestic Service, 1100 gmt, 26 May 1986 (FBIS 30.5.86), p. K 4. 66 Nhan Dan, 21 May 1986, p. 3 (FBIS 2.6.86), p. K 4.
67 Hanoi Domestic Service, 0500 gmt, 21 August 1986 (FBIS 28.8. 86), p. K 4. 68 Nhan Dan, 17 December, 1986 (FBIS 9.1.87), p. K13.
Ho Chi Minh had once described self-criticism and criticism in the press as a "weapon" to help the Party and the people redress their mistakes and develop their strong points. In fact, the media had been employed mainly to communicate the Party's policies to the populace and to mobilise the public to implement them, as suggested by the following excerpt from a 1972 Politburo directive:
Criticism and self-criticism in the press are aimed at improving political and spiritual singlemindedness in our society, ensuring satisfactory implementation of our party and state policies and lines, improving all fields o f activity, bolstering our combative strength, improving our socioeconomic construction and management abilities, developing the people's collective mastery, helping our party cadres and members as well as our people achieve quick progress,thereby contributing to building new socialist men.69
There was tight control over the issues the media could cover. Nothing that threatened the regime was published:
. . . there is no room in our press for ill-intentioned or dubious 'criticism' that sows confusion and division, distorts or smears our regime, causes the leakage o f secret information, or is motivated by individualism.70
Gareth Porter has suggested that in the period leading to the Sixth Party Congress, there was a shift in the role of the print media from that of a propaganda machine to a vehicle for the expression of contrasting views:
Journalists were encouraged for the first time to investigate cases o f wrong-doing by prominent state and party cadres, to reveal the oppression visited on the public by the state apparatus, and to expose the unvarnished social and economic realities of Vietnamese life.71
Judging from the earlier analysis of the types of cadres criticised during the campaign, it is open to question whether the media did in fact report in any significant way on wrongdoing by "prominent" Party and state cadres. It is precisely these high-level cadres who seemed to escape detailed press attention.
The media became involved in the self-criticism and criticism campaign early in the year. In Ho Chi Minh City, which had 14 press, radio and television outlets,72 the media began a feature called "Contributing Ideas to the Party" whereby people could make
69 Tap Chi Cong San, October 1986, pp. 1-5 (FBIS 8.12. 86), p. K 4. 70 Ibid.
71 Porter, ’The Politics of 'Renovation'", p. 83.
100
suggestions for consideration by the city's steering committee and other Party organisations. In a period of fifteen days during the first phase of the campaign, the newspaper Saigon Giai Phong received 255 letters, of which 166 made suggestions about the Party's "positions and policies", including 114 which dealt directly with the way in which the self-criticism and criticism campaign itself should operate. The remaining letters exposed or complained about the transgressions of specific cadres.73 Douglas Pike provided far higher figures for the public response. He said that in one weekend alone in Ho Chi Minh City, 1,300 letters arrived at a city newspaper office. Most of the complaints had to do with the economy, and the next major complaint related to officious or corrupt Party cadres and state bureaucrats.74 In the second phase of the campaign, a nationwide invitation to readers to contribute suggestions through various media channels to the Party Congress apparently yielded 15,000 suggestions in a three month period from August to October. The Party's Central Committee reportedly drew on these suggestions in redrafting the political report to be presented at the Party Congress.75
There is some suggestion that the media took to their allotted task with more enthusiasm than the Party had intended. While commending the press for creating an atmosphere of democratic political activity which would help to inspire public confidence in the Party, a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee concluded that some of the media reports had been inaccurate or had not dealt with issues appropriately. Indeed, the Committee claimed that a number of articles had "even exposed secrets on economic affairs" 76 As a result, the city press was directed to liaise more closely with Party and mass organisations, and to engage in more "positive" reporting in addition to their revelations about cadre shortcomings.77 It is clear, then, that in the mind of some leaders, the press had overstepped the mark in its reporting and needed to be brought back into line.
While these developments may create the impression that the media had been released from censorship requirements for at least some periods during the self-criticism and criticism campaign, according to Gareth Porter, journalists were still subject to severe editorial requirements.78 This was an extremely onerous requirement. The Army newspaper Quan Doi Nhan Dan complained about the restrictions, pointing to the need for officials to give journalists more serious and objective information, and denouncing
73 Saigon Giai Phong, 22 April 1986, pp. 1 and 4 (JPRS-SEA-86-123, 24.7.86), p. 93. 74 Pike, "Vietnam", p. 251.
75 Hanoi Domestic Service 2300 gmt, 11 November 1986 (FBIS 14.11.86), p. K 15. 7^ Hanoi Domestic Service 1430 gmt, 11 July 1986, FBIS 16.7. 86), p. K 7. 77 Ibid.
the tendency to "show off what is good and hide what is bad".79 The newspaper praised the new Soviet style of dealing with the media and suggested that Vietnam explore this approach.
In the context of these continuing constraints on press freedom, the question arises — what criteria were used to decide on the particular cadres who would be exposed during the campaign and who would be protected? As noted earlier, it seems likely that amongst the most vulnerable were cadres who had run foul of the powerbrokers within the Party, those who opposed current Party policies and those who had not developed strong power bases and "protective umbrellas". The allegation that some articles had even exposed "economic secrets" suggests a breakdown in the censorship process which led to a degree of local autonomy in the media. Possibly, the approval procedure for media articles had become so unwieldy that some decentralisation of decision-making had evolved. On the other hand, it is likely that southern Party leaders used the media to expand their political influence and to undermine their political rivals. Releasing economic secrets may have suited their purposes, especially if those secrets related to Vietnam's economic crisis and could be used to embarrass those regarded as responsible for the crisis.