Peter Arnett Now Reporting for Arab TV

Associated Press (Yahoo) ^ | Apr. 5, 2003 | AP

[beckett]

Middle East - AP

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Peter Arnett, fired by NBC earlier this week for giving an interview to state-run Iraqi television, is reporting for pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Arabiya, the station said Saturday.

"He (Arnett) is an able reporter who has covered wars before and who knows Iraq well," the Dubai-based station's editor-in-chief Salah Nejm told The Associated Press.

"I think he is unbiased and has a lot of experience," Nejm said.

Arnett started reporting for Al-Arabiya on Friday, becoming its third correspondent in Baghdad. His reports are voiced over in Arabic.

NBC fired him for giving an unauthorized interview to Iraqi TV, during which he said the U.S.-led war effort had initially failed because of Iraq's resistance.

NBC said the company was angered because Arnett gave the interview without permission and presented opinion as fact.

Arnett, a New Zealander, has since apologized for his "misjudgment" but described himself as a "casualty of the information war."

He won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for The Associated Press and covered the 1991 Gulf War for CNN, a network he also left under a cloud.

Arnett was the on-air reporter for a retracted 1998 CNN report that accused U.S. forces of using sarin nerve gas in Laos in 1970. He was reprimanded and later left the network.

Since being fired by NBC, Arnett has been hired by a private Belgian TV network, a state-run Greek television channel and The Daily Mirror of London, a tabloid vehemently opposed to the war.

Al-Arabiya is owned by an Arab investment group that includes Saudi, Lebanese and Kuwaiti investors.

[beckett]

Interesting tidbit I picked up yesterday about Arnett, not sure if it was on FR or somewhere else. Apparently Arnett is the originator of the famous quote supposedly from an American GI in Vietnam which went, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." Turns out the provenance of that quote is very much in doubt, and the officer who supposedly made it denies he ever said it.

It was a rare antiwar polemic from those days which did not include the absurd "destroy to save" quote.

[Dog Gone]

I wonder if he's still reporting that the war plan is a failure.

[AnnO]

Hope he moves there and never returns to US Soil!

[ChadGore]

Baathist

[xJones]

Arnett started reporting for Al-Arabiya on Friday, becoming its third correspondent in Baghdad. His reports are voiced over in Arabic.

At long last, and he will continue to spin every little thing against the U.S. No bias, right....it's all coming out now.

[McGruff]

[diamond6]

I think Arnett should be given Iraqi citizenship.

[IronJack]

Peter Arnett Now Reporting for Arab TV

When did he ever STOP??

[syriacus]

Interview with Salah Negm
Negm comes to MBC News from Al Jazeera where he was involved in building the first, and still ongoing, Arabic language all-news channel from its beginnings in July 1996 until September 2001.

[Mr Rogers]

The guy he quoted (no fan of the war) was talking about the provencial capitol that had just been shelled to pieces by the VC. He remembers saying it was a beautiful town & we tried to save it, but they destroyed it. Just a LITTLE different...

[syriacus]

I forgot to write that Salah Nejm [Negm], formerly of Al Jazeera, is the person quoted in the AP yahoo article (at the top of this thread) as saying:
"I think he [Arnett] is unbiased and has a lot of experience," Nejm said.

[chuknospam]

Can you say "washed up career?" I knew you could.

[TopQuark]

Thank you, a very telling fact. I wonder how many more are needed for him to be completely discredited. He invents a GI's statement, then dfames our military in a documentary -- and yet is still given a prominent assignment to cover the war.

He is an outright liar also in that at first, after being caught giving an interview in Bagdad, he said in numereous variations, "I am ashamed, I made a mistake." One writer asked him, "What will you do now?" And quoted him saying, to wit, "There is a Island in the Pacific, inhabited, I'll swim there." I presume he meant New Zeland, his Old Country. So much for loyaly to this land: loose a job, shed citizenship. Who needs Americans unless you get big bucks and live in comfort? Why do socialists, who altruisticly love mankind, are so materialistic and corrust in their personal lives?

He is a liar because the very next day he was hired by a Greek newspaper and in his first column declared, "I was fired for telling the truth." One-hundred-eighty degree turn in less than 24 hours.

How many more of direct, uncovered lies do the media elites need to shed people like he is?

[TopQuark]

Peter Arnett in free fall.

[giotto]

Benedict Arnett

[joesnuffy]

Being passed around & dumped like a washed up- has been- ugly azzed whore- when they find out she also has the clap-

[MadIvan]

First he joins the Mirror, now this. My my my. I suppose if he was going to go traitor, he felt he should go all the way. I can only presume he turned down Radio Baghdad given the prospects of keeping employment there were poor.

I suppose the other shoe will drop when he moves to Damascus.

Regards, Ivan

[AmericanVictory]

They deserve each other

[AmericanVictory]

Modelling themselves on the BBC and CNN. Once again, the odd bedfellowship of lying leftism and hate-filled Islamism. The important thing is to avoid the truth about a world dominated by secret-police states.

[Minty]

It is outstanding how Truth has a way to come out. That man has been vindicated. Baghdad Pete has been sown by his own doing as what he really is.

I guess they are collecting garbage over there. It would be so funny if he starts to be "controversial" now he is on the other side or just peacefully dissipates on the horizon of cheap journalism.