http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/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.
I want to apologise to the American people for clearly making a
misjudgement
Peter Arnett
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's comments drew criticism from US lawmakers.
Former New York senator Alfonse D'Amato said they gave "aid and comfort
to the enemy".
Republican congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen called them "just crazy"
and Democrat Brad Sherman labelled them "absurd".
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 in the 1998 CNN report who 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.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/2903503.stm
Published: 2003/03/31 17:29:13
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