Geraldo challenges N.Y. Times

After Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, Fox News Channel’s Geraldo Rivera was one of many TV reporters who went on the air to chastise government officials for their response to the disaster.

Now the ever-flamboyant newsman is attracting attention with his latest target: 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.”

Last week, he twice aired his views on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor,” the highest-rated cable news program, comparing the writer of the Times piece, TV critic Alessandra Stanley, to the paper’s disgraced plagiarist Jayson Blair. Fox News has also taken the unusual step of giving the paper video outtakes that it says support its case.

A review of the tape that ran on the Sept. 8 “Factor” does not appear to show Rivera nudging anyone. But so far the Times has refused to correct or clarify the story, saying it “fairly portrayed” Rivera’s role, according to spokesman Toby Usnik. Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment.

The dust-up might seem like a sideshow compared with the many other issues looming in Katrina’s aftermath. But with the Times often perceived in the media world as the liberal yin to Fox’s conservative yang, the flap has taken on broader political dimensions.

Some conservative bloggers have suggested the Times deliberately smeared Rivera, an often-ridiculed figure who is known for inserting himself into the middle of big stories. In 2003, for example, military officials expelled him from Iraq after he drew viewers a map in the sand that sketched out American troop positions.

Rivera makes no apologies for his style. “I’m a warrior-journalist,” he said.

He views the case as an illustration of what he calls the paper’s “institutional bias” against him and his employer. “Anything Fox does, there’s a presumption of some kind of wickedness involved,” he said.

The Times has attempted to improve its accuracy and accountability after former reporter Blair was caught fabricating quotes and plagiarizing material from other sources in 2003.

Among other steps, the paper appointed an editor to address reader concerns and complaints about editorial coverage; that editor now writes a Sunday column and also maintains a blog.

Alex S. Jones, a former New York Times reporter who is now director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, noted that, while columnists and reviewers such as Stanley have “a great deal more latitude [than reporters in] framing and describing things,” they nevertheless have to be factually accurate.

But Rivera may have weakened his case, Jones added, by resorting to name calling and personal attacks. “It seems like he’s defaming her far worse than she defamed him,” Jones said.

Stanley has a hard-hitting style of her own, and it has raised eyebrows in the past. In an April piece about NBC’s Katie Couric, she wrote: “At the first sound of her peremptory voice and clickety stiletto heels, people dart behind doors and douse the lights.” In a column, the Times’ public editor then, Daniel Okrent, described the passage as “gratuitously nasty.” In light of the Rivera controversy, Chicago Tribune media writer Phil Rosenthal and media blogger John Cook (www.referencetone.com) have recently taken Stanley to task for a perceived overabundance of errors in other stories.

In an e-mail, Stanley replied: “When I make a mistake, and I do make mistakes, I make sure it is corrected, as the New York Times record shows.” As for the Rivera case, she wrote: “I have looked at the tape again, and am satisfied that I described it fairly.”

Rivera sounds unwilling to drop the case anytime soon. His lawyer this week asked the New York Times to review the matter once more, and Rivera says he’ll sue if he doesn’t get his correction.

“They’re going to have to live with this fight,” he said. “I’ve stopped being the whipping boy.”