Former US Ambassador to S. Vietnam on reporters and NY Times (1981)

“Well, ah, my, I, I didn't think my relations were cool. We saw each other very frequently. Ahm. I suppose ah what you're inquiring about is why we didn't agree. I didn't agree with the majority of the reports that came from the New York Times ah correspondent who was David Halberstam ah and his predecessor, Homer Bigart... Ah. I didn't agree with some of the reports that came from the two other resident reporters who were Malcolm Browne of the Associated Press and Neil Sheehan of the UPI. I think Browne was a better interpreter than either of the other two, ah, because he could see the nuances of the situation so much better.
Ah. I think the New York Times was ah generally against US support of the Diem government and later against the, the government itself for reasons which I never quite understood, but which may have been mentioned earlier and that is that they weren't getting on with what they termed democracy fast enough, and I've already said why I thought why that was an unreasonable ah position. I do know that some of the New York Times editorials, critical of the Diem government, were broadcast ah from Hanoi in its propaganda efforts to undermine the Diem government. The editorials themselves written in New York.”