Geraldo Rivera—newly joined at the hyoid bone with Fox News Channel—made a huge boo-boo on December 6th while filling airtime with his "frontline" stories about the American War Against Terrorism in Afghanistan.

He claimed to be at the very site where U.S. military men lost their lives in a "friendly fire" incident. He went a step further and got choked up and got egregiously sappy claiming to have shed tears and said a prayer for those heroes who died on "hallowed" ground. Even if he weren't hundreds of miles from the actual site, his report would have made even Dan Rather wince.

It's not surprising that Geraldo Rivera crossed a journalistic line—certainly on a particular broadcast station from a war zone...Fox News Channel. Does Morley Safer have a show called "MORLEY!"? No, that's "Maury!", as in Maury Povitch—who now interviews the people who Geraldo used to: mothers of obese babies, flabby white trash losers, racists, ignorant homies, psychics, and everyday victims of tragedy. Basically Maury and Geraldo are synonymous with people who yell before taking responsibility and are likely to jab their crooked arms and flared fingers instead of making a point.

Is Geraldo really "fair and balanced"? Is Maury establishing new journalistic territory by making you wait two days to see DNA results for "I'm An Unmarried Teen Mother And I Don't Know Who My Baby's Daddy Is!"?

Bob Steele beautifully stated, in his "Let's Talk About Ethics" column for Poynter.org on December 21, 2001 (http://www.poynter.org/talkaboutethics/122101.htm) "He lets his ego drive his work."

It would be impossible for Geraldo to confess that he had been attempting theatricality. He'd never admit that he chose lurid excitement at the expense of accuracy and real reportage.

Geraldo Rivera is not a bright fellow (even if he laughs all the way to the bank with a gigantic head). Is he capable of recognizing the top-shelf emotion attached to any story? Yes, it's mandatory with Geraldo. Does he like doing that because it's dramatic and makes him more famous? What do you think? Is he the only reporter who thinks this is adequate cover for not having hardcore journalism skills? No, but Fox News Channel does. The station's spokespeople stated belief Rivera's "honest mistake" explanation.

He's hard to take seriously, but so many perfectly nice, normal people do take him seriously. Isn't he required to be better than the non-pro observer after over thirty years of news and journalism experience? When Geraldo is defended, only his expose on adult mental institutions— a story he broke in the 1970's— comes to mind. After that we think of the obvious broken nose, Capone's vault and JonBenet-TV products. He's never published a serious story in a valid newspaper or magazine except for quotes culled from interviews about his current comeback.

This is what his gig at Fox is: another comeback. Rivera needs more than just an outlet—he needs to be the story, make a big noise, and it doesn't really matter if he's not up to the job.

A couple of years ago he took a sabbatical from journalism—but not the media. His hiatus was exchanged for a highly publicized yacht-trip around the world.

He said he'd been in the limelight forever and was burnt out. He wanted to issue a personal challenge to himself. His off-radar life included live images and dramatic reports from the ocean itself. At one point he distributed pictures from his vision quest that included his mistress—also on his vision quest (His longsuffering wife Cece didn't know about her husband's mistress until these images came out).

Before his pilgrimage, Geraldo produced his daily CNBC and MSNBC shows into non-stop one-subject tabloid-series shows. They were the equivalent of watching "The All Freeway Chase Network" without popcorn. If you ever wanted to know what hadn't changed or developed at all in the JonBenet Ramsey or O.J. Simpson sagas...just tune into "Geraldo!" No news is breaking news in his world, and eventually you decide you can't wait for his car to run out of gas. When he returned only the Robert Hanssen and Gary Condit stories were left—cold fishes really.

Does anyone remember that he went on the Stern Radio Show and got his face pummeled by Frank Stallone...FRANK Stallone. He openly discussed his wealth, and even more, readily is version of his ground-breaking achievements; in fact he seems unable to report anything without filtering it through his own personal experiences—even if they have only a vague connection to his topic.

His digressions are characterized by a lack of research or pre-thought of any kind. Maybe Geraldo would call it leaving you wanting more, but there's no beginning and middle without an end. Like his Fox Channel buddy, Bill O'Reilly, rarely does he listen to his guests or let them finish a response (usually for the same reason—his mind is made up and he's married to a single idea).

Another reason to not give any slack to Geraldo, if Fox News Channel is serious about letting him represent their cabal: he attempts to be funny while working. Not George S. Kauffman or Gore Vidal witty, but more like when your little brother tries to hang out and be cool with you and your older friends—and he's the only one laughing.

He has help remembering all the names in the war with Afghanistan, (as does every anchor with an earpiece) but his conversational improvisational style reveals a simplistic level of comprehension on literally everything he talks about—except his own career highlights. It's as if he got all his news from television, or something...

Copyright © 2002 Viki Reed. All Rights Reserved.

Viki Reed is a regular contributor to *spark-online.