MediaWatch: March 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: March 1994
- Networks Rarely Cover Church News, Ignore Religious Concerns on Social Issues
- NewsBites: Aborting the Mother
- Revolving Door: Tara Helps Tony
- Media Ignore Sexual Harassment Charges -- When Made Against Clinton
- Crying Over Spilt Milk
- Waste Watchdogs
- Reviewers Ignore Gulf War Record
- Janet Cooke Award: ABC's Strait, Compton, Kast, Gregory, and Burns Tout Benefits of Clinton Health Plan
Reviewers Ignore Gulf War Record
Peter Arnett: The Best?
In the contest for "most congeniality," book reviewers of CNN correspondent Peter Arnett's Live From the Battlefield won hands down. Rather than question any of Arnett's Gulf War stories, New York Times reporter Bill Keller and Newsweek Senior Editor Russell Watson lauded Arnett as the "quintessential war correspondent of our half century" and "the best war correspondent of his generation," respectively in January reviews. Washington Post "Book World" Assistant Editor Marie Arana-Ward wrote: "He tells us exactly what he sees and so delivers a tale that captures the very essence of modern warfare correspondence."
But in February's American Spectator, David Andrew Price noted that the book "continues to present the conclusions of some of his more disputed reports [from Iraq] as simple matters of fact," adding: "For the European reporters who were with him, a different picture of Peter Arnett emerged."
One of his more disputed stories centered on the bombing of what Arnett called a "baby milk factory," in which he declared the plant was "innocent enough, from what we could see." Price reported that Alfonso Rojo of the Madrid daily El Mundo "reported to the Manchester Guardian shortly after the war that the `baby milk factory' was a secret location for nuclear weapons research and development," as officials claimed. Ironically, Price wrote: "After being grilled about the story by a stateside anchor, he [Arnett] recalls, `I felt that even my own news organization was doubtful of my ability to assess the facts.'"
Another questionable report involved the "Gulf Peace Team," a group of anti-war activists. Arnett interviewed American Anthony Lawrence, who denounced the war as an "imperialistic attempt to wrest the oil resources of this region." Arnett recalled: "Though I tried to balance his diatribe with pertinent questions, I got the worst of the exchange."
Disputing Arnett's account, Price wrote that "Duane Stanfield, a Scottish member of the team, remembered the episode differently in a letter to the International Herald Tribune: `To represent our views to the world, CNN's Peter Arnett chose an extremist American member of the camp. Later when I tried to get Mr. Arnett merely to read the policy statement of the camp's sponsoring organization which would have set the record straight -- he was not interested.'"
