It’s hard to feel bad for Geraldo

IT would be comforting to believe that Geraldo Rivera is inexplicable.

Sadly, when we consider Rupert Murdoch’s ceaseless schemes for global domination and the venal blood lust that pulses through Fox News, Geraldo is easy to explain -- which makes him simply inexcusable.

Seeing him descend bright-eyed and sweaty on wretched New Orleans, as he did in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, was like watching a vulture on crystal meth. The word that came to mind was not “reporting,” but “feeding.”

The only rational reaction was: Dear God! Haven’t these people suffered enough?

But, as he always has, Geraldo continues to push the limits of the possible, and, in this case, the controversy currently surrounding one of his broadcasts from New Orleans demands that we squarely confront the question, “Can you wrong the indefensible?”

This time, Geraldo’s antagonist is the New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley, whose tangential acquaintance with the facts seems to suggest that she’s the Michael D. Brown of TV critics.

As the Los Angeles Times’ Scott Collins reported this week, this whole affair began Sept. 5, when Stanley wrote a piece alleging that, while reporting from the Holy Angels Resident Hall for Retired Nuns in New Orleans -- you’ve got to love that dateline -- Geraldo “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 emphatically denies that’s what happened and has demanded that the New York Times publish a correction. In fact, this columnist, who happened to see that report, didn’t see any “nudging.”

Unseemly, self-aggrandizing yes; nudging no.

(Now something about the conjunction of Fox and Rivera seems to provoke trivial asides, but what was up with Geraldo’s scalp in New Orleans? Talk about your humidity-induced bad-hair day. For the sake of the easily alarmed, Fox should refrain from sending Geraldo anywhere where loss of power prevents operation of a blow-dryer.)

Collins agreed that a tape of the incident subsequently aired on Fox “does not appear to show Rivera nudging anyone.” The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz wrote that “a review of the videotape shows no nudging or physical contact by anyone.”

Still, the New York Times declines to correct Stanley’s description. Bill Keller, the paper’s executive editor, declined a Los Angeles Times request for comment but earlier told Kurtz, “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.”

Right, metaphorically nudging ...

Some of the conduct to which Keller alludes occurred on Fox news personality Bill O’Reilly’s show, on which Rivera has twice appeared to air his grievance. In one instance, he referred to Stanley as “Jayson Blair in a cocktail dress.” In another, he blustered that if the critic’s name were “Alexander” rather than Alessandra, he would stand outside the Times building and yell, “Come on down here, punk.”

“Call the woman a punk and then blast her in the face. Perfect,” O’Reilly replied.

(The notion of one employee of a news organization interviewing a colleague about his beef with another news organization seems to render the very notion of solipsism somehow inadequate. Still, it was worth the price of admission to hear O’Reilly describe Stanley as “a committed liberal” and the New York Times as “a pamphlet for the secular left.” Oh, why not go all the way, Bill, and use the words that really are in your heart ... like “infidel dogs.”)

Rivera told Collins that if the paper does not print a correction, he intends to sue. He also assailed what he called the New York Times’ “institutional bias” against his network. “Anything Fox does, there’s a presumption of some kind of wickedness involved,” he said.

Now, just because it’s owned by Murdoch and run by Roger Ailes, why would anyone presume that?

It is true, however, that Stanley does have an unusually difficult time getting things actually -- as opposed to metaphorically -- right. Several commentators, relying on those websites that keep track of individual journalist’s correction rates -- these are people whose formative life experience apparently occurred while serving as a school-hall monitor -- have noted that 11% of the stories written by Stanley over the last four years have required corrections.

Rivera, of course, has had his own problems. Who can forget his emotional report from Afghanistan, where he recited “The Lord’s Prayer” over a spot “hallowed” by the friendly-fire deaths of American servicemen? Inconveniently, the tragedy had occurred hundreds of miles away. Then there was the time he was thrown out of Iraq for revealing the positions of American combat troops.

Oh well ...

These perversely entertaining attributes aside, this tempest in a teapot does raise a question serious enough to consider: While news organizations give critics wider latitude to express opinion than any other staff members -- and, in fact, encourage their subjectivity -- do critics also have obligations to the facts different from those of other journalists?

Clearly they do not.

Ultimately, a critic’s credibility rests on a standard very much like the one that applies to laboratory research. The only valid results are those that others in similar circumstances can reproduce. For example, during her 23 years as the New Yorker magazine’s dance critic, Arlene Croce enjoyed an unchallenged preeminence in her field not simply because of her opinions but because you could be sure that, had you seen the same performance she was reviewing, every foot would have been placed precisely as she described. You trusted her subjective impressions, in other words, because they were a rational interpretation of the facts.

If you read a film review, then trot down to the multiplex to see the picture and discover that the critic got the narrative sequence wrong, you’re not likely to take his or her opinion about the direction very seriously.

We don’t trust certain critics -- whatever their field -- more than others simply because somebody has given them a title. It’s because we can see the rational interplay of interpretation and facts in their work.

The notion that the thing we call authority rests on that interaction is hardly new. More than 1,000 years ago, Carolingian theologian John Scotus Erigena wrote that “reason naturally creates authority, but authority cannot create reason.”

Reason -- even the reasoning of television critics -- rests on facts, which is why their abuse makes it possible to wrong even Geraldo Rivera.

All this notwithstanding, it’s tempting to entertain the notion that, in Alessandra Stanley, Rivera’s work finally has found the critic it deserves.