However, I think you really overestimate the downrange reporting coming from Vietnam (I don't know how old you are; the war was over before I was born, so I only read about it after the fact).
There was definitely a lot of focus on US casualties. We were losing about 300 per week, whereas now it is more like 300 per quarter or per year.
The main difference was in Vietnam, the journalists had free reign to go anywhere in the allied area they wished; in Iraq/Afghanistan, reporters are generally embedded with a specific unit. Maybe psychologically embedding with the unit makes reports identify with the soldiers more.
The only really stunning difference between Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan was down to Walter Cronkite giving his opinion that the war would end in stalemate. I don't think very many other Vietnam war reporters (from Vietnam; not US based) gave personal commentary like that. I think that is down to Walter Cronkite as a person, and that he had experience with a previous war (he flew on bombers and covered landings during WW2) before reporting on Vietnam. None of the embedded reporters in Afghanistan or Iraq covered a major war other than Gulf War I before (Anderson Cooper, Geraldo, Christiane Amanpour, etc.)