By BRAD DAVIS
Alumni News staff
Former CNN correspondent Peter Arnett, who gained fame and respect in the trenches of Vietnam, told an NU audience the media were doing an “incredibly bold job” covering the recent crisis in Kosovo.
Without the extensive coverage of the plight of the Kosovar refugees and the torture brought upon them by Yugoslavian President Slobodon Milosevic, Arnett said, the conscience of the American public would not be awakened, and public support would not be with U.S. troops now fighting overseas.
Arnett spoke to an audience of about 500 Wednesday, April 14, at the Lied Center for Performing Arts on the NU campus. His was the last in a year-long series of lectures sponsored by the E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues.
Despite an information hole in Kosovo — Western reporters have been banned by the Milosevic government from the area — the media have braved violent border guards, harsh weather and sometimes sub-human conditions to tell the story of the Albanians under threat of ethnic cleansing, he said.
Because of daily reports filed by journalists, Arnett said, Americans are able to see and judge the situation in the Baltic region and gauge whether the aerial onslaught is necessary or effective or whether ground troops would be feasible in the region.
This information will ensure the Kosovo crisis does not escalate into another Vietnam, Arnett said. The reporter won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Vietnam War for The Associated Press in the 1960s.
The dynamics of the Balkan crisis are different from those in the Vietnam War. The greatest difference, Arnett said, was that Kosovo posed no threat to U.S. national security, whereas the spread of communism to Vietnam was perceived to attack American interests.
Instead, Arnett said, Kosovo plays to the heart.
Where the media has shone throughout the crisis, he said, has been in telling the stories of men, women and children being forced from their homes to lead a life on the run.
Though battle continued to rage in the Balkan region, Arnett said he thought peace was possible.
Widespread change can occur, he said. Europe as a whole over the last 100 years has been something of a larger version of the Balkans. The English and the Germans and the Germans and the French were “at each other’s throats,” he said, but within the century have banded together to form the European Union.
Before peace is realized, though, reporters will continue to battle the war zone to present images and stories that will illustrate the horrors of battle and its effects on the region, he said.
Arnett is not stranger to a war zone — he’s reported from 17 of them.
From places as remote as Rwanda in Africa or that have seemed as near, via satellite television, as Baghdad, Iraq, Arnett said one of the most important things he’d learned as a war correspondent was to “duck.”
The New Zealand-born journalist has been roughed up a few times, has heard and seen bombs falling near his feet and has had to bear the agony of witnessing atrocities, but his professionalism has kept him level-headed and detached from potentially volatile and dangerous situations, he said.
Although Arnett’s reporting has garnered him accolades and praise, he faced criticism over CNN’s 1998 report on Operation Tailwind, alleging that the United States used nerve gas against its own defecting troops during the Vietnam War.
The report was later found to be false and was retracted by CNN. Two CNN employees were fired over the incident, while Arnett, who narrated the report, received a reprimand. In late April, CNN severed its relationship with the correspondent; official comments indicated no direct connection to the Tailwind story.
Despite the storm of controversy over the nerve gas story, Will Norton Jr., dean of NU’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications, said Arnett’s reports from Baghdad during the Gulf War provided a new generation of Americans with the kind of reporting not seen since the days when Arnett sent his stories across the AP wire in Vietnam.
Arnett was one of the few Western journalists to be granted a one-on-one interview with Iraq leader Sadaam Hussein during Operation Desert Storm and the only Western reporter to be based in Baghdad throughout the war.
“For more than 35 years, Peter Arnett has risked his life all over the world to bring us news,” Norton said, introducing the speaker at the Thompson Forum. “Clearly, this is a man of uncommon courage and uncommon character.”