Peter arnett biography

New Zealand-American journalist (born 1934)

Peter Gregg ArnettONZM (born 13 November 1934) is a New Zealand-born American journalist. He is known for his coverage of the Vietnam War and the Gulf War. He was awarded the 1966 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for his work in Vietnam from 1962 to 1965, mostly reporting for the Associated Press.

Arnett also worked for National Geographic magazine, and later for various television networks, most notably for nearly two decades at CNN. Arnett published a memoir, Live from the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad, 35 Years in the World's War Zones (1994). In March 1997, Arnett interviewed Osama bin Laden, leader of Al-Qaeda. The journalism school at the Southern Institute of Technology in New Zealand was named for Arnett.

Early life

Arnett was born in 1934 in Riverton, in New Zealand's Southland region. His first job as a journalist was with The Southland Times.

Vietnam

During his early years in journalism, Arnett worked in Southeast Asia, largely based in Bangkok. In 1960 he started publishing a small English-language newspaper in Laos. Eventually, he made his way to Vietnam, which the French had abandoned after being defeated at Dien Bien Phu by communists from North Vietnam.

Arnett became a reporter for the Associated Press, based in Saigon in the South, in the years when the United States began to get involved in the civil conflict and through the Vietnam War. On 7 July 1963, in what became known as the Double Seven Day scuffle, he was i

Of the many New Zealand journalists who have reported around the globe, Peter Arnett arguably became one of the most visible on the international stage.

Arnett grew up in Bluff, "at the bottom end of the world" one of three brothers. All three would go on to write for The Southland Times in Invercargill, before heading much further afield. Peter went to Indonesia and Laos, then made his name during a decade plus in Vietnam, reporting for news agency Associated Press.

Arnett was in Laos reporting on their Civil War for the Associated Press, when Captain Le Kong seized control of the small South-East Asian Country for a second time on 10 August 1960. Facing challenging communications to the outside world and closed roads out of the country, Arnett swam across the river with his story, passport and $200 in his teeth to reach Thailand. He sent the story by telegraph, and the next day it appeared in papers around the world.

This was only the start of a career in which he would become a premiere war correspondent. His peers lauded his work. “The best reporter of the [Vietnam] war” claimed New York Times journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam. “Maybe the quintessential war correspondent of our half-century” extolled the paper’s editor, Bill Keller. Perhaps the biggest indicator of his journalistic doggedness was his relationship with those in power. In 1965 an aide of American President Lyndon Johnson described him as "more damaging to the US cause than a whole battalion of Vietcong". The following year Arnett took away his own Pulitzer Prize, one of 60 journalism prizes won over a long career.

In 1980, many foreign assignments later, Arnett wrote Canadian television series Vietnam — The Ten Thousand Day War, which summarised 30 years of conflict over 13 hours. In 1983 he produced and presented documentary Poisoning for Profit, which won a Cable ACE award for best Public Affairs or Ma

Born November 13, 1934

Riverton, New Zealand

Controversial journalist who broadcast the first coalition air strikes of the 1991 Persian

Gulf War live from a Baghdad hotel

"I knew that interviewing Saddam Hussein in the middle of this war was going to be controversial."

Peter Arnett in Live from the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad—35 Years in the World's War Zones.

Journalist Peter Arnett has reported on more than a dozen wars during his long career. But he is probably best known for his dramatic live coverage of the first U.S. air strikes against Baghdad, Iraq, during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Arnett and his colleagues Bernard Shaw and John Holliman, who became known as the "Boys of Baghdad," faced great personal risk in order to broadcast the start of the war live from their hotel room. Their reports on the first U.S. bombing raids aired on the Cable News Network (CNN) a full half-hour before American military leaders officially announced that the war had begun.

Arnett remained in Iraq throughout the 1991 war and provided controversial reports about the conflict's effect on the Iraqi people. He resumed his controversial role during the 2003 Iraq War, when he returned to Baghdad to report on the U.S.-led invasion. After criticizing the American war plan in an interview that appeared on Iraqi television, Arnett was fired from his job.

Adventurous young man becomes a journalist

Peter Gregg Arnett was born in Riverton, New Zealand, on November 13, 1934, the second of three sons born to Eric Lionel Arnett and Jane (Gregg) Arnett. Arnett spent his childhood in Bluff, a small town on the southern coast of New Zealand that had once been a home port for many whaling ships. Although few whales remained by the time Arnett was a boy, he often saw seals and penguins along the shore.

Arnett's parents placed a high value on education, so they sent their sons away to an exclusive private boarding school, the Waitaki Boys High School.

Mr Peter Arnett
The Associated Press reporter

Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent Peter Arnett has spent a lifetime covering wars and international crises for major American news organizations.

Arnett is best known for his live television coverage from Baghdad during the first Gulf War in 1991, including his interview with President Saddam Hussein. Arnett won a television Emmy.

Forty years ago as a young news correspondent, Arnett began covering the Vietnam War for the Associated Press, an assignment would last 13 years, from the buildup of US military advisers in the early 1960s to the fall of Saigon in 1975. In 1981, Arnett joined CNN, covering wars and civil disturbances in scores of countries in Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa.

As the fear of terrorism grew in the 1990s Arnett kept returning to Afghanistan. He was the first western journalist to interview the arch-terrorist Osama Bin Laden. After leaving CNN in 1999, Arnett worked for Foreign TV.com, Camera Planet TV in New York, and was on assignment in Baghdad for National Geographic Explorer when Gulf War 11 broke out in March, 2003.

He volunteered to help out the NBC TV network and MSNBC in daily news coverage after the network's crew left Baghdad at the beginning of the war. That coverage came to an end after Arnett gave a controversial interview to Iraqi TV critical of the US war planning. However, Arnett continued to cover the war for the London Daily Mirror newspaper and several Arab, European and Asian TV networks.

Arnett lectures on the media and the Iraq situation and has spent several months in 2007 as a Visiting Professor at the Chueng Kong School of Journalism and Communications at the Shantou University.

He has written his autobiography "Live from the Battlefield", which was named "a Book of the Year" by the New York Times.

Over the years, Arnett has received 57 major journalism awards and also honorary doctorate degrees from un