News hound…
Geraldo isn’t happy with The New York Times:
A Sept. 5 analysis piece in the New York Times said that Rivera, while reporting at the Holy Angels Resident Hall for Retired Nuns in New Orleans, “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 is demanding a correction from the paper, armed with videotape that he said proves he didn’t nudge anybody out of the way. “No one is fairer game than me,” the 62-year-old newsman said in a phone interview Wednesday. “But you still have to be accurate about me.”
My question: What was he doing “helping” in the first place? Oh, yeah–he was becoming part of the story. Or, more accurately, he was making the story about Geraldo.
Journalists are a part of every story they cover. Objectivity in that regard is fiction. But there’s a big difference between the natural participation of practicing journalism and being a shameless news hound.
I assume your take would be different if there was no one else around but Geraldo to help (which I’m sure was not the case). Surely, journalists should not be precluded from providing assistance if necessary simply to avoid becoming part of the story. Obviously, this does not apply to Geraldo’s type of self-serving intervention, but as a general principle, don’t journalists have the same obligatons (legal and moral) as other citizens?
Yes…my view would be different.
As I mentioned previously, the NBC reporter who had his “Good Samaritan” moment filmed for the 6:00 news and Brian Williams who said: “It surprised me at how different it was to know that the man floating past my window, face down, was an American, in American.”
Get real, people, the news is about the news. How pathetic. Is it any wonder we flee from such self-absorbed nonsense?
R- It’s part of the glory bias. Geraldo is simply the “best” at it.