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Risk and Redemption
Surviving the Network News Wars
Arthur Kent
Interstellar Inc. 308 Pages. $26.
On Wednesday, March 16, 1994, NBC correspondent Arthur Kent won his case against his former employers. In a joint news release, NBC executives not only apologized for trying to bury Kent, but also praised him with a long, glowing list of accomplishments. NBC television network executives also agreed to pay him buckets of money, the exact amount undisclosed. In addition, they offered Kent his old job at NBC news. What a day for a journalist who had employed his keen reportorial skills to prove a major American television network had done him wrong.
Eighteen months earlier, the NBC brass ordered their network press machine to paint Kent a coward after he'd refused an assignment to Bosnia. At the time, his bosses contended that this was the reason they had dismissed Arthur Kent, who had been a media event himself during the Gulf War. Kent had captured the public's attention, and the tabloids dubbed him "The Scud Stud" for his live broadcasts from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
It turned out that events that led to his dismissal were much more complicated than simply refusing an assignment to the next hot war zone. In his book, "Risk and Redemption, Surviving the Network News Wars," Kent details those events through a series of depositions taken in preparation for the trial. But along...