Sleazy setup, Geraldo-style

Geraldo Rivera's evil "twin" is his brother Craig, producer of his bottom-feeding Fox News show. Craig played a dirty trick yesterday in his segment on Blackwater USA, the company that provides security for the State Department in Iraq.

Craig wanted me on the show, he said, to talk about the history of private security contractors (PSCs) in America. He had read my September 28 essay in RealClearPolitics.com about how PSCs have been the part of our history since Captain John Smith landed in Virginia in 1607, and Captain Myles Standish was hired to protect the Pilgrims on their Mayflower voyage to establish Plymouth Colony in 1620.

After a pre-interview over the phone yesterday (September 30) he mentioned that Geraldo had a family conflict and wouldn't be doing the show, and that a stand-in, a former prosecutor, would take his place. He asked if I could speak about some of the legal questions surrounding Blackwater and PSCs in Iraq and that I'd probably be asked on the show.

All well and good. What Craig Rivera didn't say was that I'd be up against the mother and brother of one of the Blackwater men, Jerry Zovko, whom extremists murdered and mutilated in Fallujah in 2004. And apparently he didn't tell them that they would be facing someone else, either.

It was a setup. The Blackwater segment came at the end of the show, following prurient segments on child-rape porn and other sensationalistic garbage. It opened with Craig's heavily biased (and factually inaccurate) video about Blackwater. Even so, I thought it would still be a good segment to talk about on the show. Instead, in a separate studio were Jerry Zovko's mother and brother who were there to tell their story - not discuss the history of PMCs.

So when the hostess asked me her first and only question - about legal accountability for Blackwater and other PSCs - the subject deteriorated on takeoff. I mentioned that the firms are now accountable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to the Attorney General, and to the State Department under what I take are very tightly written contracts. I added that such accountability isn't good enough for those who stand to make millions from suing Blackwater. Had I been allowed to finish, I would have blamed a California trial lawyer, not family members, as being the war profiteer.

But I couldn't get that part out because the brother of the dead Blackwater guard started yelling. He appeared to think that the Geraldo producers had set up his mother and him. He was visibly very angry. Who could blame him? It was clear that Craig Rivera hadn't been truthful with the Zovkos either when inviting them on the show. The hostess made a displeased comment, cut off the program, and that was the end of it.

All in all another sick Rivera stunt, setting up the family of a dead man. I sympathize with the Zovko family.

To view the video of the segment on Geraldo at Large, click here.

Comments

[Colin]

Sounds like a pretty good example of why playing the narrative/counter-narrative game with the media is so hard. They control the filter, and they set up the rules. If you control the medium, it's pretty easy to sandbag and/or drown out the other side.

[tom]

While you may feel you've been misinterpreted, I also think it was a bad choice of words. I certainly don't know the details of the family's lawsuit but it seemed to be in poor taste to accuse them of money grubbing on tv.

On the other hand, knowing Rivera's history, a setup should have been expected. He's still living in the "trash tv" years.

[Brian S, Phoenix AZ]

Sounds like what you'd expect of Fox "News," to me. Who watches that drivel?