At the age of 91, the Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Peter Arnett has passed away, according to American media reports.
Arnett won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1966 for his coverage of the Vietnam War with the Associated Press (AP). However, he also became famous for his work at CNN, and his name became widely known to the public during his coverage of the First Gulf War.
His professional career spanned decades, covering confrontations in countries such as Iraq, Vietnam, and Nicaragua. Arnett’s son, from New Zealand, announced that his father died on Wednesday in the presence of his family and friends in California. He also noted that his father had been receiving palliative treatment for prostate cancer.
Arnett first worked for the AP as a correspondent documenting the war in Vietnam from 1962 until the end of the war in 1975, frequently accompanying soldiers during missions. In a 2013 conversation, Arnett remembered a moment when he saw a soldier being shot in Vietnam while stopping to read a map. Arnett told the American Library Association, “As the colonel leaned over to look at the map, I heard four loud gunshots and their impact on the bullets and the map and then into his chest, at very close range to my face. He fell to the ground in front of my feet.”
The journalist left the agency in 1981 to join the American channel CNN, where he later became famous for his coverage of the First Gulf War. According to the AP, he was one of the very few Western correspondents who remained in Baghdad, where his broadcasts from the city were often pierced by the sounds of missiles and air raid warning sirens. “There was an explosion very close to me, you might have seen it,” Arnett once shouted live on air.
While in Iraq, he interviewed then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In an article for the Roanoke Times, Arnett said he decided to be “as free with questions as objective circumstances allowed.” He continued: “I did not shy away from the premise of confronting the man many called ‘The Butcher of Baghdad.’ I figured he couldn’t do worse to me than what the continuous bombing of Baghdad threatened.”
In 1997, Arnett became the first Western journalist to interview Osama bin Laden in his secret hideout in Afghanistan, a few years before the September 11, 2001, bombings in the United States. According to multiple American press reports, when asked about his plans, bin Laden told Arnett: “You will see them and read about them in the media, God willing.”
He later worked for NBC and was fired from the broadcast after giving an interview to the official Iraqi television channel, in which he appeared critical of U.S. military strategy. He was hired by the Daily Mirror just a few hours later and described his firing as a “shock.” He wrote in the British newspaper: “I will report the truth of what is happening here in Baghdad and I will make no apologies for it.”
Born in 1934 in Riverton, New Zealand, Arnett later became a U.S. citizen and lived in Southern California since 2014. Edith Lederer, a former colleague who still works at the AP, told the agency: “Arnett was one of the greatest war correspondents of his generation—brave, unafraid of risks, a beautiful storyteller, and an analyst.” she added: “His journalism on paper and on camera will remain a legacy for future generations of journalists and historians alike.”
On the other hand, Nick Ut, a retired photographer who worked with Arnett in Vietnam, said he was “like a brother.” He told the agency that “his death will leave a big hole in my life.”
Arnett is survived by his wife Nina Nguyen and their two children, Andrew and Elsa.
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