KEY POINTS:
He has a journalism school named after him and a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Vietnam War. Now war correspondent Peter Arnett has picked up a New Year's gong.
The 72-year-old former Southlander has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to journalism.
Arnett - at his home near Washington for Christmas but soon to leave for China on assignment - said the reporting skills he learned in New Zealand had stayed with him throughout a career that has included covering the Vietnam War and the Gulf War and exclusive interviews with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
A "rough and tough" upbringing in Bluff also helped. "That positive-aggressive attitude did not hurt my career."
Arnett said he was "delighted" with the honour, particularly as "governments around the world generally don't like me".
The Riverton-born reporter has won more than 50 journalism awards but his career has not lacked controversy. His contract with CNN was not renewed in 1998 after he narrated a story accusing the US Army of using sarin gas against a group of deserting US soldiers in Laos in 1970. CNN later retracted the story after a Pentagon inquiry contradicted the report.
NBC sacked him in 2003 for giving an interview with state-run Iraqi TV in which he said the US-led war effort had initially failed because of Iraqi resistance.
Arnett, who won the Pulitzer for international reporting in 1966, makes frequent return visits to Southland, where he visits his first paper, the Southland Times, and inspires new generations of journalists at the Southern Institute of Technology, which has named its journalism school after him.
The school also boasts a display of Arnett memorabilia, displaying several of his Vietnam-era relics, including a typewriter, a camera and a flak jacket.
Although Arnett has lived much longer overseas than he has in New Zealand, he said he always felt as though he was reporting for a Kiwi audience, using techniques "drummed into me" while working on New Zealand newspapers.
He is an American citizen but retains his New Zealand passport and is looking forward to his next visit to Southland.
"I want to get back and breathe in some of that air in Bluff. It is life-giving."
