MediaWatch: March 1991
Table of Contents:
Arnett Bites
Peter Arnett's defenders insist he's a veteran war reporter, able to distinguish between truth and propaganda. How would they explain these incidents?
Live on CNN the morning of February 1, Arnett reported on his trip to see alleged civilian damage caused by the Allies: "While we were there, a distraught woman shouted insults at the press and vented anger at the West." The woman shouted in English: "Mea culpa! Mea culpa! All of you are responsible, all of you! Bombing the people for the sake of oil! Hunted as if we are Iranian! We are human beings! Who made this area like this? The flames in the area, it's the West! Mea culpa, the blood, she is on your head!"
CNN aired the video of the "distraught" woman 12 more times over the next two days. Eight days later, on February 8, CNN conceded it had been duped, but the correction only aired four times. As anchor Bobbie Batista announced: "The woman is said to be the assistant to Iraq's Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs." One footnote: Newsweek reported the woman "also showed up on French TV wailing in French."
In a February 6 CNN report Arnett detailed his visit to a hospital full of wounded, including "a Bedouin youth who said he was tending his sheep when a low-flying aircraft chased him across the field and wounded him in the arms and legs with gunfire."
"Preposterous," former Reagan defense official Sven Kramer told MediaWatch. "If it was a soldier with a Sidewinder missile, perhaps a pilot would have cause to take after an individual. But if it's a shepherd standing in a field among his animals, I can't imagine that the pilot would waste the ordnance."
