Rick Springfield recalls killing a man in Vietnam while he was there performing for troops
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What happened
Australian singer Rick Springfield, later known for 1980s hits including "Jessie's Girl," said this week on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast that in 1968, as a 17-year-old musician entertaining U.S. troops in Vietnam, he stayed overnight at a U.S. Navy encampment in the Marble Mountains near Da Nang when it came under attack. He said he was in a radio shack and loaded mortars after soldiers invited him to; the next day they told him one round had hit someone. Springfield, now 77, said he has been unable to find a place for the knowledge that he was "responsible for the end of a life." He had previously described the incident in his 2010 memoir "Late, Late at Night."
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2 of 2 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.
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- How it developed
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This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage names the person Springfield killed as a Viet Cong; right-leaning coverage never does, describing only an unnamed man whose life ended that night. That combatant label is how NBC News presents the attack. The New York Post stays with the soldiers' next-day shout that he had "got one," without saying who died.
Right-leaning coverage lingers on how the band got hired; left-leaning coverage instead relays that the troops already doubted the war. NBC News has soldiers saying they did not know "why we're here." The New York Post walks through a booking that required girls in the band and a trip that made no money.
Did anyone besides those soldiers ever confirm that the mortar killed a person?
Bottom line
You only hear Springfield's victim called a Viet Cong in NBC News. The New York Post never names who the mortar hit.
The receipts — 5 facts one side's coverage lacks
- Springfield killed a Viet Cong
- Radio confirmation that there were no friendlies in the area before he fired
- Springfield was 17
- The band was in Vietnam for about four months
- He wrote about the incident in his 2010 memoir Late, Late at Night
The Left View
NBC News framed the recollection as a harrowing experience that still haunts Springfield, quoting that he "was responsible for the end of a life," that the memory "is still there," and that it feels as if it happened to "another guy." The report underscored his account of "John Wayne time" as a teenager who "didn't really understand what I was doing," and noted that the soldiers he met said they did not know why they were in Vietnam. It also cited his memoir line that the episode "to this day sends a shiver down my spine."
The Right View
The New York Post framed the account around a "split-second decision" on an "insane" four-month tour, noting that troops hired bands that included women who reminded them of home and that the musicians made little money. It quoted his description of the attack as "like the movies" after a radio warning of movement with no friendlies, calling it "John Wayne time," and his later view that the reality was "pretty heavy." The coverage included his remark that "you couldn't do any of this now."
Our Take (balanced)
NBC News's strongest emphasis is the lasting moral weight Springfield assigns the incident, supported by his statements that he cannot find a place for having ended a life and that troops themselves questioned why they were there. The New York Post's strongest emphasis is the chaotic, now-unrepeatable circumstance of a teenage civilian entertainer being drawn into live mortar fire, supported by how such tours were booked and his "John Wayne time" characterization. The central unresolved tension is whether the story is chiefly one of enduring personal guilt over an unintended wartime killing or of a young outsider's immersion in the unreality and violence of Vietnam entertainment circuits.
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