Peter Arnett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist renowned as one of the world’s most influential combat correspondents, has died at the age of 91, according to U.S. media reports. He reportedly passed away on Wednesday after battling prostate cancer.
Gatekeepers News reports that Arnett won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his coverage of the Vietnam War while working with The Associated Press (AP), a period that cemented his reputation as a fearless and authoritative war correspondent.
He rose to global prominence as an AP wire-service reporter in Vietnam between 1962 and 1975, often accompanying troops on frontline missions under fire. Arnett was among the last foreign journalists to remain in Saigon as the city fell to communist-backed North Vietnamese forces, marking the end of the war.
After leaving the AP in 1981, Arnett joined CNN, where he became one of the network’s most recognisable faces. His international profile soared during the 1991 Gulf War, when he reported live from Baghdad and conducted a high-profile interview with then Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
His real-time frontline broadcasts — sometimes transmitted via cell phone — made him a household name worldwide. However, Arnett resigned from CNN in 1999 after the network retracted a report he narrated alleging the use of deadly sarin nerve gas against deserting U.S. soldiers in Laos in 1970.
He later reported on the second Gulf War for NBC News and National Geographic, but left NBC in 2003 after granting an interview to Iraqi state television in which he criticised the U.S. military’s war strategy.
Born on November 13, 1934, in Riverton, New Zealand, Arnett began his journalism career at the Southland Times, before working for an English-language newspaper in Thailand. He later became a naturalised American citizen.
In 1995, he published his memoir, “Live From the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad, 35 Years in the World’s War Zones,” chronicling decades of reporting from conflict zones around the globe.
Arnett had lived in Southern California since 2014. He is survived by his wife, Nina Nguyen, and their children, Elsa and Andrew, U.S. media reported.
— AFP
