Peter Arnett Obit : A Life Reporting Conflict

Peter Arnett, the New Zealand-born war correspondent whose relentless, often dangerous reporting from Vietnam and across Asia helped reshape global understanding of modern warfare, has died at the age of 91.

Winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, he became one of the most well-known journalists of his era, presenting vivid eyewitness accounts that brought distant conflicts into living rooms around the world.​

Born in Riverton, Southland, in 1934, Arnett was of Ngāi Tahu and Pakeha descent, and grew up in nearby Bluff, a place he described as “at the bottom end of the world.”

He began his journalism career at The Southland Times in Invercargill, where he and his brothers all worked as reporters before he ventured to Southeast Asia.

Arnett’s early assignments took him to Indonesia, Laos and Thailand, where his resourcefulness became legendary; during a coup in Laos, he famously swam a river with his story, passport and cash in his teeth, to file copy from Thailand. In 1962 he moved to Saigon while working for the Associated Press, beginning more than a decade at the heart of the Vietnam War. From there he filed thousands of stories, often from the front lines, documenting major battles, the impact on civilians and the widening scope of the conflict.​​

His reporting from Vietnam, sometimes controversial for its unflinching portrayal of the war’s human cost, earned him the Pulitzer Prize and the respect of AP colleagues who described him as the finest reporter of that conflict.

Arnett later broadened his beat across Asia and the wider world, covering conflicts and political upheavals from Central Asia to the Middle East, and writing and producing the landmark television series “Vietnam — The Ten Thousand Day War.” In 1981 he joined the then-fledgling CNN, where his live broadcasts from Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War made him a household name.​

Across a career spanning more than three decades in the world’s war zones, Arnett interviewed figures including Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and chronicled these experiences in his memoir, Live from the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad, 35 Years in the World’s War Zones.

He always retained strong ties to New Zealand, holding dual citizenship, and in 2007 was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to journalism.

The former journalism school at the Southern Institute of Technology in Invercargill was later named in his honor, a tribute to the boy from Bluff who chased stories far beyond the horizon.​

Thumbnail image is from Arnett's memoir, copyright AP

 Asia Media Centre