WASHINGTON, 20 December — Serious journalists are having a hard time taking TV-talk-show-host-turned-war-reporter Gerald Rivera seriously. As a matter of fact, the peeved pressmen have accused the Fox News Channel correspondent of false reporting, war-mongering and inappropriate silliness during his assignment in Afghanistan — not a place, they say, for unprofessionals.
Newspaper and magazine correspondents tend to consider TV journalists as entertainers more than reporters, and Rivera has lived up to this profile "by carrying a pistol, rolling in the sand, sporting a suede bush hat and offering his portrayal of Geraldo as Hemingway, of he-man reportage, rife with guts, glory and meaningful pauses," wrote the Washington Times. Rivera’s antics have even caught the press by surprise: He recently appeared — unnoticed and unaccredited — in full cowboy-correspondent regalia in the background of a Canadian Press photo, featured prominently in Monday’s edition of the Washington Post.
But Rivera turned mainstream media reporters against him by the biggest professional faux-pas of all — lying. On Dec. 6, Rivera told his viewers he was in Kandahar, on the "hallowed" spot where three Americans had been killed the day before. But Baltimore Sun television columnist David Flokenflik called his bluff, which forced Rivera to admit — via satellite phone — that he had been to the north in Tora Bora.
He was confused, he said, by the "fog of war."
A chorus of criticism followed. "Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera, who couldn’t bear being away from the action in Afghanistan, was hundreds of miles from the site of a friendly fire incident he reported on," CBS noted in a story, posted on its website Tuesday, captioned "Where’s Geraldo?"
Critics have also questioned Rivera’s credibility, both for the content of his dispatches and his decision to carry a gun in a war zone.
Vanity Fair’s James Wolcott said on CNN: "They’re doing everything but renting their own helicopters and firing rockets."
