NBC Fires Reporter Peter Arnett

[Cloudbringer]

I can't see how any other option was open. He was hardly 'unbiased' by giving an interview like that in the middle of the war. And he's not an idiot, so he had to know the risk he was taking.

Guess I'm inclined to agree, he apologized for getting caught...no employer is likely to give you a second chance if you are insincere in your apologies for screwing up.

[ 03-31-2003, 02:58 PM: Message edited by: Cloudbringer ]

[pritchke]

It is hard to make a judgement since I have not seen the interview he did with Iraqi TV but it does seem like the more I read the more his firing was warranted.

[ 03-31-2003, 03:38 PM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

[Ziroc]

Wow, I didn't know he was fired. I thought he was just 'unembeded' [img]smile.gif[/img] .
Personally, I hate media people spouting all kinds of information on what the Military is doing or not doing..

He said that 'they were losing the battle plan'. How the hell does HE know that?! He doesn't. I've seen SO much speculation from the media, it's so annoying. Most of the time they are wrong anyway.

[Azred]

On the one hand, Mr. Arnett suffered a severe lapse in judgement for agreeing to be interviewed on Iraqi TV. Perhaps he decided that the risks outweighed the benefit of gaining access to that medium.
On the other hand, because he was offering only his own speculations and observations about what he sees transpiring vis-a-vis military operations in Iraq I don't think he should be terminated. Being sent back home to cover other events would have sufficed. "How's the weather, Peter?" [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Firing jouranlists for having opinions or not keeping the networks with high ratings sets a very disastrous precedent. Enough people have difficulties trusting the media already; I doubt they can afford to add the fuel of "say what we want" to that particular fire....

[img]graemlins/erm.gif[/img] One final observation. Isn't it obvious that Iraqi resistance will hinder any Coalition attempts to capture Hussein and liberate the Iraqi people? [img]graemlins/petard.gif[/img]

[Skunk]

Journalists in the US used to have the right to form their own opinions and own analysis, regardless of whether it was popular. Since 9/11, that no longer seems the case.

In any event, UK based Daily Mirror has hired Peter Arnett, and also ran the front page headline:

"Fired by America for telling the truth,"

Guess that having a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist on your staff who isn't afraid to speak his mind is still considered to be a good thing in the UK...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...britain_arnett

Oh and finally:
"Reporters Without Borders today accused the US-British coalition forces of displaying "proven contempt" for the work of the journalists trying to cover the war in Iraq and called on the coalition authorities to carry out an internal investigation into the treatment of the press and to publish the results.

"Many journalists have come under fire, others have been detained and questioned for several hours, and some have been mistreated, beaten and humiliated by coalition forces," Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said. "Furthermore, the information ministry in Baghdad has been bombed twice although, as everyone knows, it houses the offices of the international news media." Ménard said.

Stressing the organisation's concern about these incidents, Ménard said they seemed to indicate that the US and British forces take little account of the presence of journalists in the field who are not "embedded" with military units. "These incidents show a proven contempt for the work of journalists," he said, calling on the authorities to carry out an internal enquiry and publish the results.

A group of four non-embedded journalists - two Israelis (Dan Scemama and Boaz Bismuth) and two Portuguese (Luis Castro and Victor Silva) - accused the US military police of giving them "the worst 48 hours in our lives" after arresting them on the night of 25 March while they were sleeping near a US unit between the towns of Karbala and Najaf. Although carrying press cards, they were threatened, mistreated and held in a jeep for 36 hours without being able to communicate with their news organisations or their families, who were consequently very worried.

"The US soldiers said we were terrorists and spies and treated us as such," said Scemama, who works for the TV station Israel Channel One. "They want all the journalists in Iraq to have one of their liaison officers with them to supervise the footage they are broadcasting. There is no doubt that this is why they treated us so cruelly," he said. They claimed that the Americans were doing their utmost to ensure that no journalists were able to move about independently inside Iraq. Many journalists in Kuwait have also reported cases of non-embedded colleagues being questioned for several hours, threatened and sent back by the British or US military when they tried to cross the border into Iraq.

The information ministry's headquarters in Baghdad has twice been the target of bombardment by the coalition, on 29 and 30 March, damaging foreign news media equipment. The international media "tent village" on the building's roof was wrecked by the first missile that struck at dawn on 29 March. Journalists had left the building less than an hour before these strikes, which could have caused many casualties among the foreign journalists in Baghdad.

Al Jazeera cameraman Akil Abdel Reda, who was reported missing in the southern city of Basra, was questioned and detained for more than 12 hours on 29 March by US forces. A spokesperson for Al Jazeera, an Arabic-language satellite news station based in Qatar, said he had been "relatively well treated." The spokesperson also said the station had notified the Pentagon before the start of the war about its team's presence in Baghdad. The cameraman and his crew had previously come under fire from British tanks on 28 March as they were filming food distribution by the Iraqi authorities in Basra.

US freelance journalist Phil Smucker, who works for the Christian Science Monitor of Boston and the Daily Telegraph of London, was forcibly returned from Iraq to Kuwait on 27 March by the US military, after being accused him by of jeopardising the safety of a unit by being too specific in the information he gave in an interview for CNN on 26 March.

A TV crew with the British news channel ITN came under fire from US-British forces at Iman Anas, near Basra, on 22 March while travelling in two jeeps clearly marked with the letters "TV." Reporter Terry Lloyd was killed and cameraman Daniel Demoustier was wounded in this incident. Two other members of the crew, French cameraman Frédéric Nerac and Lebanese interpreter Hussein Othman, are still missing. Reporters Without Borders asked US Gen. Tommy Franks to order an enquiry into the exact circumstances of this incident."
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=5619

This kind of treatment I expect from the Iraqi's - BUT FROM THE COALITION?
Is this the freedom that we're going to give to Iraqi's? I hope not.

[ 04-01-2003, 02:21 AM: Message edited by: Skunk ]

Originally posted by Skunk: In any event, UK based Daily Mirror has hired Peter Arnett, and also ran the front page headline: "Fired by America for telling the truth," Guess that having a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist on your staff who isn't afraid to speak his mind is still considered to be a good thing in the UK...

The Daily Mirror has a reputation here as being a very anti-war propaganda machine...I can see why they would scoop up Arnett as an employee.

Keep in mind though that this same "Pulitzer Prize winning journalist" has retracted statements before, namely when he reported (untruthfully) that the U.S. was gassing defectors from the Viet Nam war and again when he reported on the "baby factory" (milk producing plant) in Afghanistan.

The Daily Mirror can have him. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Ziroc]

Originally posted by Lil Lil:

The Daily Mirror can have him. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Sure can! I'm just shocked that he TOOK the job! lol. With the rep TDM has.

[Bardan the Slayer]

Originally posted by Ziroc: Originally posted by Lil Lil: Quote: The Daily Mirror can have him. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Sure can! I'm just shocked that he TOOK the job! lol. With the rep TDM has.[/QUOTE]The Daily Mirror, through opposing the war in Iraq, has become immensly popular in the UK. It always was one of the big boys on the newspaper stage, but with all the anti-war feeling here in the UK, it's firm anti-war stance has boosted it's already considerable readership.

Yes, it is blatently anti-war, and I disagree with many (well, most) of the things it says, but don't make the mistake of thinking it's readership in it's home country views it as 'propoganda' - roughly half of the population agrees with it and sees it as the only publication to have the guts to stand up to the ruling parties.

On the topic of Mr Arnett, the first thing that jumped out at me was the statement

NBC fired journalist Peter Arnett on Monday, saying it was wrong for him to give an interview with state-run Iraqi TV in which he said the American-led coalition's initial plan for the war had failed because of Iraq's resistance.

Excuse my confusion, but I wasn't aware that journalists were now being briefed to the point where they can confidently declare that any military plan was succeeding or failing, and the reasons therefore. That isn't the case over here, and I doubt it is the case over there. I think he should remember he is a journalist, and his military opinions are just that - opinions. If you don't mind, I'll wait for a more authoritative source to tell me about the progress of the current plan in action.

[Magness]

Originally posted by Azred: Firing journalists for having opinions or not keeping the networks with high ratings sets a very disastrous precedent. Enough people have difficulties trusting the media already; I doubt they can afford to add the fuel of "say what we want" to that particular fire....

Arnett wasn't fired for having an opinion. He was fired for expressing it on Iraq's Gestapo TV. If he'd expressed that opinion in the US, it might have turned some heads, but nothing more. There are plenty of others expressing more contraversial opinions.

That said, anchors of the various shows on the cable new networks get fired "regularly" for bad ratings. NBC made a quick decision to protect their ratings from the firestorm of criticism that would have descended on them. MBC could have held off to see if the level of criticism warranted a firing. But that would have placed them at risk. They simply decided that the best course was a preemptive firing to seperate themselves from Arnett. IMHO it was the wisest course of action since now few will hold NBC responsible for Arnett's comments.

[Ronn_Bman]

Originally posted by Bardan the Slayer: Excuse my confusion, but I wasn't aware that journalists were now being briefed to the point where they can confidently declare that any military plan was succeeding or failing, and the reasons therefore. That isn't the case over here, and I doubt it is the case over there. I think he should remember he is a journalist, and his military opinions are just that - opinions. If you don't mind, I'll wait for a more authoritative source to tell me about the progress of the current plan in action.

Thank you! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Peter can be a great journalist, but he has always been a bit too impressed with his own importance.

In the interview with Iraqi TV that caused his firing, he told the Iraqi public that the coalition could have avoided most of the problems they've seen if they'd been paying more attention to his reports.