Media Musings: Geraldo stretches ethics to limit
It’s time again, patient reader, for kicks and kudos for the brilliant and the banal in the media world, from your media curmudgeon:
KICK: To multi-million-dollar Fox News correspondent and all around insensitive jerk Geraldo Rivera, for detailing the sniper killing of Kenneth H. Bridges while pumping gas and then going to a nearby Hooters to autograph the skimpy orange hot pants of several willing waitresses. He joined his brother, Craig, in using a felt-tip pen to scrawl their names, left and right, on each cheek of the Hooters shorts.
Also, The Baltimore Sun has alleged that Geraldo filed a “spectacularly mistaken” report of friendly fire in Afghanistan. Rather than Fox News reprimanding Geraldo (the other nets would have), it has broken off any relationship with the newspaper. While Fox News did not defend Geraldo this time, it said in a blunt way: “What Geraldo does on his own time is his business.”
You may remember Geraldo used to be on ABC News but that deal died quickly. Further, you may remember his shenanigans about opening the “secret vault” of Al Capone which was, like Geraldo, empty. Compare this behavior to the other cable news people, such as the tough, serious reporters for CNN and MSNBC, and you see why The Baltimore Sun jumped Geraldo.
Compare the treatment of Geraldo to the treatment of Associated Press reporter Christopher Newton. Newton was fired by the wire service because it could not “verify the existence of more than 45 people and a dozen organizations cited in news articles by Newton. The wire service said it fired him eight days after the publication of an article on criminal justice statistics.
Geraldo Rivera is 58-years-old and a lawyer. He knows better but he was, at one time, the most sued reporter in the country for his flamboyance with facts. That story, if memory serves, even made it to the front page of the serious, august Wall Street Journal.
KUDOS: To the Murfreesboro Daily News Journal, for a well done story by reporter Bryan Brooks about an angry threat on a lone protester at the Ten Commandments rally at the Rutherford County Courthouse. There was a chilling quote from the man who confronted the dissenter who said he believed in the right of free speech and that was a good thing because otherwise he would punch the dissenter.
In other words, it’s OK for the majority to be protesting the court decision that posting a version of the Ten Commandments was a violation of the First Amendment, but it wasn’t really OK to say the dissenters were wrong. This is an old, old problem with the public understanding of the First Amendment.
What was even more extraordinary is that those who disagreed with the rally were invited to attend and speak. It’s the old canard that free speech is great as long as I am the only one speaking.
The battle in Murfreesboro is a sad commentary on public understanding of modern First Amendment law and is a pushing aside of the right of all religions to be heard, respected and left alone. The tragedy is that it is used, also, to divert the money and time of government away from very serious issues facing Rutherford County and Murfreesboro. The Ten Commandments can be posted in any house of worship anytime it wants to.
Think on this, please, for a moment: If posting a version of the Ten Commandments is being done to protect us from an angry deity, why did it not work on September 11th? Leave religion to hold its place as a personal decision. If you wonder why the Founders feared religion and government intertwined, look at the Daily News Journal story. Such a union, forced upon a people, generates anger, hate, and oppression.
(Ed Kimbrell is a professor in MTSU’s School of Journalism.)