- KR Bharat
- 2025-12-18
Los Angeles: Peter Arnett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent whose fearless frontline reporting spanned conflicts from the Vietnam War to the Gulf Wars, died at the age of 91 in California on Wednesday. He passed away at his home in Newport Beach after battling prostate cancer, surrounded by family and friends, his son Andrew Arnett said.
Arnett won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his coverage of the Vietnam War for The Associated Press (AP), where he reported from 1962 until the fall of Saigon in 1975. Renowned for his eyewitness journalism under fire, Arnett brought the realities of war to global audiences with clarity and courage.
Though well known among journalists during his wire-service years, Arnett became a household name during the 1991 Gulf War when he delivered live television reports for CNN from Baghdad as US-led forces bombarded the Iraqi capital. While most Western journalists fled the city, Arnett stayed behind, calmly broadcasting missile strikes and air-raid sirens from his hotel room.
“Peter Arnett was one of the greatest war correspondents of his generation — intrepid, fearless, and a gifted storyteller,” said Edith Lederer, AP’s chief correspondent at the United Nations and a former Vietnam War colleague. “His work will inspire journalists and historians for generations.”
Born on November 13, 1934, in Riverton, New Zealand, Arnett began his journalism career at the Southland Times before moving to Southeast Asia, where he worked in Thailand and Laos. He joined the AP in the early 1960s, beginning a career that would define modern war reporting.
After leaving the AP in 1981, Arnett joined CNN, later reporting on conflicts in Iraq and securing exclusive interviews with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. He authored the memoir Live From the Battlefield: From Vietnam to Baghdad in 1995.
Despite controversies during his later career, Arnett continued reporting globally and later taught journalism at Shantou University in China. He retired in 2014 and settled in Southern California with his wife, Nina Nguyen.
Arnett is survived by his wife and their children, Elsa and Andrew. Colleagues and admirers remembered him as a journalist whose bravery and dedication reshaped war reporting and left an enduring legacy in global journalism.
