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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Geraldo Vs. NY Times |
| 2005-09-13 |
| Via Drudge, also saw this last week on Fox News At the time, it seemed like a minor, one-day story -- amid the tragedy of the hurricane catastrophe -- but is The New York Times, normally quick to run a correction or clarification, making it much more than that by stonewalling? On Monday, Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post defended Geraldo Rivera in his campaign to gain an apology from the Times for accusing him of showboating during his Katrina coverage last week. The Chicago Tribune also covered the dispute today. The Times's TV critic Alessandra Stanley wrote last week that the flamboyant Fox correspondent had "nudged an Air Force rescue worker out of the way so his camera crew could tape him as he helped lift an older woman in a wheelchair to safety." Rivera has denied this from the start, claimed that a tape of the incident does not bear this out, threatened to sue, accused Stanley of being "Jayson Blair in a cocktail dress," and suggested that if a male reporter had made similar allegations he would settle the dispute with his fists. Meanwhile, the Times has not issued a correction, and Stanley has said her description was accurate. In his Monday column on the front page of the Style section, Kurtz writes that "a review of the videotape shows no nudging or other physical contact by Rivera. At a nursing home, Rivera and a staffer are shown lifting the woman's wheelchair down an interior flight of stairs. Then one Air Force man takes the wheelchair and a second one comes into the picture, looking as though he is going to help carry the elderly woman down the outside stairs. The second Air Force man leaves the picture and Rivera reappears, helping the first airman carry the wheelchair outside as the camera rolled." Sort of. It was never clear whether the AF man still inside the house was going to bring the lady out, or if Geraldo was there all along. He then quotes New York Times Editor Bill Keller: "It was a semi-close call, in that the video does not literally show how Mr. Rivera insinuated himself between the wheelchair-bound storm victim and the Air Force rescuers who were waiting to carry her from the building. Whether Mr. Rivera gently edged the airman out of the way with an elbow (literally 'nudged'), or told him to step aside, or threw a body block, or just barged into an opening -- it's hard to tell, since it happened just off-camera. Frankly, given Mr. Rivera's behavior since Ms. Stanley's review appeared ... Ms. Stanley would have been justified in assuming brute force. ... Ms. Stanley's point was that Mr. Rivera was showboating." But Kurtz concludes: "Still, the tape shows no nudging, so the refusal to even run a clarification gives Rivera free rein to call the paper 'arrogant.'" Geraldo was at the top of a narrow stairway, holding the legs of the wheelchair while another guy backed the old lady down the stairs. Air Force soldier gets behind the guy at the halfway point on the stairs, then steps back while he and Geraldo get the lady down to the landing. Then we don't see Geraldo until he's helping get the lady through the door from behind her with another person helping him with the front end (I don't remember if that person was AF personnel or not). Geraldo was never shown shoving, nudging, nor otherwise impairing the efforts of uniformed personnel. The tape I saw had no audio, but I'm betting Geraldo can produce audio showing he never told AF personnel anything about "stepping aside", otherwise I doubt the salty veteran Geraldo would try to take on the Times. |
| Posted by:Chris W. |
| #6 It really doesnt' matter if she's a good or bad reporter for the Times. She's a female and fills a quota for them.. I think reporting the news went out with the Times a long time even befor Jayson Blair. |
| Posted by: macofromoc 2005-09-13 12:31 |
| #5 11a5s - unfortunately her type proliferates in many areas (had a fun day in Court yesterday with one who wears robes) and benefits from the silence and short memory of the general population ... I'm no fan of Geraldo frankly and don't know the truth of the matter, but by the same token media canabalism amidst the aftermath of Katrina is bizarre and disgusting. There are surely countless things people should know but won't hear or see because of the oxygen, airtime and print sucked up by media BS about the media. |
| Posted by: MunkarKat 2005-09-13 11:21 |
| #4 Showboating? GERALDO? No, it can't be. I'm SHOCKED, I tell ya, SHOCKED! |
| Posted by: mojo 2005-09-13 10:53 |
| #3 I don't know who (if anyone)is telling the truth here, but when I originally heard Mr. Rivers had "rescued a survivor" I cracked up. He'll always be "Al Capone's bottle-boy" to me. A bigger ham there isn't. |
| Posted by: Spot 2005-09-13 08:38 |
| #2 Ah, Alessandra. I had a run in (purely professional, I assure you) with her once, gawd, 19 years ago. My personal, first hand experience is that she is a liar and a careerist of the first order. For her to call Geraldo a showboater is like the dingiest, most soot-covered pot calling the kettle black. People like her gravitate to the NYT like moths to flame, eager to be in the spotlight and willing to pay any cost to get there. Why does elite media suck? Because elitists are ruthless assholes willing to do anything to get that elite status. The worst of the worst become editors. Think Paul Krugman with a better poker face. |
| Posted by: 11A5S 2005-09-13 07:52 |
| #1 This should be a delicious slime-fest and I hope that Geraldo and the NYT's end up humiliated. Actually the reporter, Stanley, strikes me as one of their more fair-minded reporters when it comes to dealing with Bush and conservatives. This, despite the fact that she's Nancy Pelosi's daughter!!! But from what little I know of her, she strikes me as somewhat spoiled and ditzy. I always notice her by-line ever since I learned that she was Pelosi's daughter. |
| Posted by: Abd Al-Sabour Shahin 2005-09-13 06:29 |