John Laurence
He won the George Polk Memorial Award of the Overseas Press Club of America for "best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and enterprise abroad" for his coverage of the Vietnam War in 1970.
Laurence was initially supportive of U.S. policy in Vietnam and gave favorable if neutral coverage in what was referred to by the U.S. Army public information officers as "being with the program".
[2]: 123–5 However, as he saw more and more of the war, witnessing the deaths of American GIs and Vietnamese civilians, the accidental bombing of a village in neutral Cambodia, coming under fire from friendly forces, and seeing the corruption endemic in South Vietnam, he became more critical of the U.S. presence and what might actually be achieved there.
Frankie's House became a social club for a small group of young correspondents and their friends who talked, listened to music and smoked marijuana between field assignments.
The story caused controversy when broadcast and was investigated by Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) and III MAF, but no further action was taken other than a reprimand of Laurance and newspaper reporter Jim Lucas.
Later, at a formal ceremony in New York, the medal was handed to Castan's widow by the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland.
[2]: 3–90 Laurence had dinner with Walter Cronkite the night before the CBS anchorman returned to the U.S. following his two week tour of Vietnam to study the aftermath of the Tet Offensive.
"The grim and unpublicized routine of the war in Vietnam—the dangerous assignment of an American company to penetrate the jungle and take Hill 943—was related with unusual intimacy in last night's news special of the Columbia Broadcasting System," New York Times TV reviewer Jack Gould wrote.
[12] Laurence received an Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his 1968 series of investigative reports called "Police After Chicago" on the CBS Evening News.
"People are so much more interesting than statistics, a fact demonstrated once again last night on the Columbia Broadcasting System's superb television study of the generation gap, "Fathers and Sons" wrote George Gent in the New York Times.
[2]: 527 Along with his cameraman, Keith Kay, and sound technician, James Clevenger, they spent four months recording the daily lives and experiences of Company C, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, in Tây Ninh Province in War Zone C near the Cambodian border.
In April 1970, Laurence accompanied C Company as it conducted a helicopter assault into Memot District at the start of the Cambodian Campaign, attempting to engage the North Vietnamese military headquarters known as COSVN.
In 1974, he covered the wars in Cyprus, Rhodesia and Ethiopia and the continuing artillery, air force and terrorist incidents between Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
It received a Founder's Award at Traverse City given by Michael Moore, and a Certificate of Appreciation from the 10th Mountain Division at its base in Louisiana for a screening of the film for troops about to embark for a year in Iraq.
