Having opinions shouldn't be a firing offense. Credulous behavior, on the other hand …

Everybody has an opinion about whether Peter Arnett was wrong to appear on state-run Iraqi television yesterday and sound off on the failure of the U.S. invasion; the administration's "reappraisal" of battle plans; the Iraqi "determination" to fight; and what he called the "growing" domestic opposition to President Bush's war.

NBC News, one of Arnett's employers, had two sets of opinions about their reporter's remarks. At first, the network defended its man in Baghdad unequivocally, saying:

His impromptu interview with Iraqi TV was done as a professional courtesy and was similar to other interviews he has done with media outlets from around the world. … His remarks were analytical in nature and were not intended to be anything more. His outstanding reporting on the war speaks for itself.

Less than 12 hours later, the network decided that Arnett's behavior was in fact a firing offense and gave the veteran war correspondent the pink slip. NBC News President Neal Shapiro said:

It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV, especially at a time of war. … And it was wrong for him to discuss his personal observations and opinions in that interview.

One day, NBC considers his remarks "analytical" and his appearance a "professional courtesy"; the next, the whole affair is just plain "wrong." If NBC was so clearly of two minds, the least they could have done would be slap his wrists with a suspension and keep him on as a witness to the seige of Baghdad.

Arnett deserves firing, but not for the reasons NBC gave.

The network's overnight reversal has more to do with corporate damage control than the parsing of proper journalistic conduct. Had NBC—or National Geographic Explorer, Arnett's primary employer, which also fired him today—supported the reporter, they would themselves have become the focus of the controversy. (As it was, Fox News Channel's John Gibson, TV news's only albino werewolf, was eating MSNBC alive last night as he hashed and rehashed the news of the Arnett interview.) It was better, from NBC's perspective, to bury the issue quickly and pat Peter's face with a shovel than to examine the ethics of his appearance.

What are those ethics? Should Arnett—or any reporter working for a U.S. news concern—automatically be fired for speaking to the state-run media of a nation the United States is trading bullets and bombs with? No. A reporter should be free to talk to anybody he wants to talk to, from Satan to Santa Claus, in pursuit of a story—even if that entails a trip to Hell or the North Pole. Should a reporter keep his "personal observations and opinions" to himself? Not necessarily. Reporters share their views about current events and politics with regularity on television and in the press. And since the outset of the war, nearly every TV anchor, Kuwait correspondent, embedded battlefield reporter, and weatherman has, at one time or another, volunteered an opinion about its progress.

If we are to construct a case for Arnett's dismissal, let's use his advanced stupidity and gullibility as the posts and beams, and not the fact that he, like most of us, has opinions and spoke his mind.