SWEET AND SOUR

For a few minutes this morning I thought I was a victim of an April Fool’s joke when radio station executives called me with the latest ratings.

The 3AW Drive programme went up. From 15.9 to 19.7. The highest Drive rating ever. It was a great homecoming present.

But it has been a bit of a sweet and sour day. The ratings victory for me and for 3AW –an easy Number One – was sweet. But the sourness involved a colleague and regular contributor to my radio programme, Peter Arnett. He’s been reporting bravely from Baghdad for weeks.

At the weekend he gave an interview to Iraqi Television. And he said the Coalition’s war plan had failed because it underestimated the Iraqi resistance. I did not see the full interview until last night and I think it was an error of judgement. It was understandably seen in the United States as giving encouragement to an enemy.

Arnett has apologised to the American people and said the impromptu interview had embarrassed him.

He has since been sacked by NBC and by National Geographic magazine.

I have been trying to contact him for the past 24 hours and hope to get an interview and an explanation from him. He has now been hired by the Daily Mirror in London which is stridently anti the war.

When I first heard Arnett’s comments I thought maybe he was greasing up to the Iraqis in the hope that he would get an exclusive interview with Saddam Hussein. He was the only journalist left in Baghdad for the whole of the Gulf War in 1991 and he did get a two-hour interview with Saddam back then.

The weekend interview was an error of judgement. But when you think about Arnett is not a mouthpiece for the American military and a poll in the US showed that about 44% of people thought they had underestimated the Iraqis’ resistance. So maybe Arnett wasn’t out of line with public opinion.

And even if he were, he is entitled to an opinion as unpalatable as it may be to many.

That is why, even if I disagree with his tone and his content, I shan’t sack him. And will continue to use him. If I can find him.

Tuesday, April 1, 2003

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2002