Media Reaction
After the deaths, the military junta asserted that the Ngô brothers had committed suicide. On 6 November, Information Minister Trần Tự Oai declared at a news conference that Diệm and Nhu had died through "accidental suicide" after a firearm discharged when Nhu had tried to seize it from the arresting officer. This drew immediate scepticism from David Halberstam of the New York Times, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his Vietnam reporting. Halberstam wrote to the US Department of State that "extremely reliable private military sources" had confirmed that the brothers were ordered to be executed upon their return to military headquarters. Neil Sheehan of UPI reported a similar account based on what he described as "highly reliable sources". Father Leger of Saint Francis Xavier Catholic Church asserted that the Ngô brothers were kneeling inside the building when soldiers burst in, took them outside and into the APC. Lodge had been informed by "an unimpeachable source" that both brothers were shot in the nape of the neck and that Diệm's body bore the signs of a beating.
Read more about this topic: Arrest And Assassination Of Ngo Dinh Diem
Famous quotes containing the words media and/or reaction:
“The media no longer ask those who know something ... to share that knowledge with the public. Instead they ask those who know nothing to represent the ignorance of the public and, in so doing, to legitimate it.”
—Serge Daney (1944–1992)
“An actor must communicate his author’s given message—comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.”
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)