Arthur Kent Files Lawsuit Against NBC

Former NBC foreign correspondent Arthur Kent, who was fired last Aug. 21, filed a $25-million lawsuit in U.S. District Court here Thursday alleging that NBC blackened his reputation by accusing him of cowardice.

Kent, who is currently in Bosnia doing reports on the Yugoslavian civil war for the British Broadcasting Corp., the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and the Observer newspaper of London, said that the network damaged his reputation when executives accused him of refusing an assignment to Zagreb, Croatia.

“I have never been in litigation before,” Kent said in a news release. “However, the efforts by certain executives at NBC to blacken my reputation by accusing me of cowardice cannot go unchallenged. The stories concerning my refusal to go to Yugoslavia planted in the press by anonymous sources at NBC were false when made and continue to be false.”

The suit, which alleges breach of contract, defamation and fraud, also names several NBC executives as defendants, including Michael Gartner, president of the news division, and Steve Friedman, executive producer of “NBC Nightly News.”

NBC spokeswoman Peggy Hubble said the network would not comment on the suit. But in interviews at the time of his dismissal, Hubble said that Kent was difficult to work with, often refused to talk to his producers and argued over assignments. His refusal to go to Zagreb was the last straw, she said. The lawsuit was the latest shot fired in the ongoing dispute between NBC and Kent, who had been one of the network’s fastest-rising correspondents after earning the nickname “Scud Stud” during coverage of the Persian Gulf War.

Kent has acknowledged refusing the assignment to Zagreb but said that he did so because the network ordered him to go without advance planning or consultation and wouldn’t provide what he considered to be adequate security for a war zone.