Peter Arnett sacked for being 'anti-war' on Iraqi TV

Monday March 31, 2003 18:00

by Matthew

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2903503.stm

US network sacks top journalist
US broadcaster NBC has sacked celebrated journalist Peter Arnett
after he gave an interview on Iraqi television saying the US-led
coalition's initial war plan had failed.

NBC said on Monday: "It was wrong for Mr Arnett to grant an
interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV, especially at a time of
war.

"And it was wrong for him to discuss personal observations and
opinions in that interview."

Arnett, one of the few US correspondents left in Baghdad, became
a household name reporting for CNN there during the Gulf War in
1991.

NBC broadcast a statement from network officials on its Monday
morning Today show announcing the sacking of the New Zealand-born
journalist.

On the same broadcast, Arnett, 68, apologised to NBC and to the
US public, saying he was "embarrassed" by the controversy.

"I want to apologise to the American people for clearly making a
misjudgement," he said.

"I am not anti-war, I am not anti-military," Arnett said,
although he added: "I said over the weekend what we all know
about the war."

Pulitzer prize

Arnett, a naturalised American, is in Baghdad for NBC and MSNBC's
National Geographic Explorer.

Iraqi television broadcast him saying "the first war plan has
just failed because of Iraqi resistance. Clearly the American war
planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces".

NBC had initially defended him on Sunday, saying he had given the
interview as a professional courtesy and that his remarks were
analytical in nature.

But by Monday morning, after Arnett had spoken to NBC news
president Neal Shapiro, the broadcaster said it would no longer
work with him.

During the television interview, broadcast in English and
translated by an Iraqi anchor, Arnett said: "Our reports about
civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi
forces, are going back to the United States.

"It helps those who oppose the war, when you challenge the
policy, to develop their arguments."

Arnett won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for the
Associated Press before making his name on television with CNN in
Baghdad.

His reporting of an allied bombing of a baby milk factory there
in 1991 drew criticism from the US military, which said it was a
biological weapons plant.

Arnett stood by his report.

He was later the on-air reporter of the 1998 CNN report that
accused American forces of using sarin gas on a Laotian village
in 1970 to kill US defectors.

Two CNN employees were sacked and Arnett was reprimanded, later
leaving the network.