During the early years of the 20th century, as French efforts to exploit their colonial territories became more oppressive, the authorities came more and more to rely on the print media for propaganda purposes. At the same time numerous patriotic newspapers and books appeared, condemning the conduct of the French colonialists and those who collaborated with them. By the 1930s newspapers such as Nam đồng thu xa, Gương thiếu nhi, Hai Bà Trưng and Tôn Trung Sơn in Hà Nội and Cương học thu xa and Duy tân thu xa in Sài Gòn had become important mouthpieces for the growing nationalist movement.

During the First Indochina War journalists were deployed at the front and several revolutionary presses were set up in the resistance areas of the Việt Bắc. After 1954 these were relocated to Hà Nội, where the basic infrastructure of today’s press sector began to take shape. Both the Lao động (Labour) and Tiền phong (Vanguard) newspapers date back to this period; Nhân dân (People), today’s leading national newspaper and the official organ of the Communist Party Central Committee, followed in 1951. Many local newspapers were also set up in the north during the late 1950s. Meanwhile newspapers proliferated in the south during the late 1950s and 1960s; the most important daily newspapers were Tiến Chương, Tự do and Cách mạng Quốc gia in Vietnamese and the Saigon Daily News and Saigon Post in English.

Vietnamese journalism really came of age during the war against the United States, when hundreds of students were recruited fresh out of college and sent south along the Trường Sơn (Hồ Chí Minh) Trail to report news from the front. Working alongside veterans of the French war, they were obliged to endure conditions of great hardship, particularly cameramen and photographers (see also Photography) who walked for days through the jungles and marshes with heavy cameras and developing equipment. War correspondents were expected to fight as well as report the progress of the war, and hundreds died during the course of the campaign.

From the late 1950s many Vietnamese journalists were sent to the Soviet Union, China and some East European countries for training in press and propaganda work. Those who returned established the Sub Institute of Press and Propaganda within the Hồ Chí Minh National Institute of Political Studies in Hà Nội, which offered the first home-grown training for journalists. Since the 1980s Faculties of Journalism have also been established at the Hà Nội University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH) and at the Hồ Chí Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

Since đổi mới ('renovation') Việt Nam's print media sector has expanded rapidly, from a total of around 435 newspapers and periodicals in 1996 to a current figure of some 700 newspapers and periodicals published by around 450 press organisations. Some local newspapers are published in the languages of ethnic minorities and one, in Hồ Chí Minh City, is published in Chinese. Publications intended for a foreign audience are numerous and include the Việt Nam News and Sunday News, Le Courrier and several magazines and journals. The total labour force in the press sector is currently estimated at over 7,500 people, around 30 per cent of whom are female.

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