Media organisations in America are doing some serious soul-searching after a
HE had dodged napalm and bullets in Vietnam, not to mention cruise missiles and the Husseinian propaganda machine in Baghdad.
But even a Pulitzer Prize-winning reputation could not have prepared Peter Arnett for the toughest battle of his career last Wednesday. Venturing with trepidation on to the political battleground of the executive offices at CNN headquarters in Atlanta, armed only with an eight-page brief with which to defend himself, the veteran journalist spent eight hours dodging the slings and arrows of outraged bosses.
Following the all-day barrage, Arnett emerged only semi-unscathed. He kept his job as the cable network's prestige correspondent, but admitted his reputation had been peppered with enough shrapnel to kill an ordinary man.
The Atlanta showdown had come, of course, in the fallout from the debacle of the joint CNN/Time magazine report on Operation Tailwind - an alleged covert project in Laos during the Indochina war, in which the United States military stood accused of using nerve gas on American defectors.
The allegations, painstakingly prepared for the premiere showing of the joint documentary programme, Newsstand, sent far greater shock waves through the two news outfits than their intended target, the Pentagon. First signs that the allegations were false came when CNN's military affairs analyst resigned in disgust, prompting the top brass at both Time and CNN to launch probes into the reporting behind the show.
When an independent study by a CNN-hired media lawyer concluded there was no evidence to back up the sensational nerve gas claims, Ted Turner's flagship did the Atlanta equivalent of a ritual falling on its sword. In perhaps the most bizarre day of its nearly 20 years of history, the station flagellated itself repeatedly, leading its segments by apologising for the Tailwind report and then applying some balm with studio discussions of experts postulating on what was wrong with American journalism.
