Interesting question. I'm trying to remember. It's hard to compare. I don't think it was as bad as now.
a) for one thing, at the comparable stage in the VN War (1964-1967) there was much less anti-war protest activity, while there was tremendous activity in the civil rights and Black power movements. Coverage of King, in the North, while he was active in the South, was favorable. Coverage of Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam, SNCC, and so on, was atrocious and venomous. Anyway, there wasn't really much media on anti-war protests at all then by comparison.
b) the media coverage of anti-war protests was also always mixed in with other stuff, like drugs, music, and youth culture. Basically it was always pitched as a problem of crazy / misled students and adolescents, and the political opposition to the war often got lost in there. "Students smoke dope, wear funny clothes, the guys let their hair grow, they protest, they practice free love, the listen to loud music. It's a big problem."
Actually the protests then really were much more youth/school/campus-centered than today.
c) the media had more of a norm of factual and responsible reporting than today, and they worked harder on actual news. Now they devote hours and hours of air time to government flacks and creepy pundits, disinformation agents, etc.
d) By the time you got up to the large protests of 1968 and thereafter, you also had prominent politicians speaking against the war all the time, like Fulbright, Wayne Morse, Gene McCarthy, and so on, combative Senate hearings, political campaigns, and the like, and this on the one hand 'legitimized' the debate over the war but on the other hand took air time away from actual leftists. Today the mainstream politicians have all been in lapdog mode up until very recently, so more of the focus is on the protests.
e) The pro-war rhetoric by politicians was very extreme, and their quotes would get into the media.
f) Furthermore, there was much more public support for the war then than now. MUCH more, and the right to protest was not even generally accepted by the public. My father told me that I was doing "a traitorous thing" when I went to a peace protest, and that was pretty ordinary language then. What the media lacked in pundits, they could always substitute for by quoting the man/woman in the street who would say what terrible traitors we were, we would burn in hell, etc. "If you burn your draft card, burn your birth certificate at the same time. From that moment on, I HAVE NO SON." (Letter to a teen-age son, John Wayne, a top-selling 45.) Counterdemonstrations were nasty. Pro- war rallies were big. By contrast, we had ONE right-winger at the demonstration in Chicago walking around with a sign reading "I Can't Understand Why - UN Resolutions shouldn't be enforced." (I asked him, "Should they enforce Resolution 242?" "No.")
Other people's thoughts? It's an interesting question.
LP