As journalists are padlocked inside studios reporting on one story or another, often their humanity is stripped in their reporting of the news. Not always, but often. Also this is not directed towards all news broadcasters since there are still some good ones out there. What we see reporting these news stories are akin to Stepford wives or well quaffed anchors that look similar to mannequins. At times, lost within their telling of the story is the human connection.
Many of have now seen Geraldo Rivera stand toe-to-toe confronting Bill O’Reilly when it came to a drunk driver that took the life of a teenage girl. One would say that Rivera’s cranium was about to blow as well as O’Reilly’s. We expect it coming from the blow-hard O’Reilly, but when Geraldo Rivera jumped aboard Fox News, he lost part of his humanity.
In reporting of this on-air altercation of words, for the first time Countdown’s, Keith Olbermann named Geraldo Rivera, The Best Person of the day. As I viewed him bestow Rivera with this award, while amazed at that fact, I agree he was owed it.
This case that both Rivera and O’Reilly were speaking drunk driving and good ole Bill O’Reilly had to turn it into a debate on illegal immigration. It was wrong of O’Reilly to make a political statement when a girl lost her life. Then again, he has a propensity for doing just that. He is not just a Stepford wife, but a man who long ago lost his soul or sold it to the Devil. I would opine the latter.
In sticking to his guns as he confronted Bill O’Reilly, Geraldo’s emotions were visible in which he was making some connection to his soul. That is the Geraldo Rivera I once respected as he broke the Willow Brook story in which mental patients were ware housed living in their own feces. I still remember those horrid images.
As a young reporter for Eyewitness News which is a local ABC affiliate in New York City, I was stunned when he broke this case and saw the images being broadcasted. I suspect many felt the same as everyone was talking of it and trying to understand this story. That is when I think the news was the news. During those times decades ago as he broke this story, it was straight reporting in which no spin could be spun because the images would not allow for it. Sadly over time we have been conditioned to allow for the spinning of horrific events such as 9/11. No, this is not a debate on that issue, but the news period.
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