You can also download the MP3.

Playing the role of company man, John Gibson on the Fox News Channel came to the defense of “my friend Geraldo Rivera,” who had joined the network as a war correspondent. Gibson was upset that CNN’s Aaron Brown had done a story about allegations raised by the Baltimore Sun that Rivera had misrepresented a battle in Afghanistan. Gibson said, “What is unbelievable about this is that CNN is currently getting its butt kicked by Fox News, and the folks over there just can’t stand it.”

Gibson went on to say that, “In the TV business, there is no excuse for passing judgment on the air on your competitor, or what your competitor is doing, unless it becomes a story that must be covered. The Geraldo story is not one of those.” He went on to say that “what Brown and the Baltimore Sun are up to, I think, is attacking Fox through Geraldo. The liberal media is fuming over Fox’s success over CNN, because that’s just not supposed to happen.”

But conservatives are the ones truly dismayed by the hiring of Rivera. Consider the February issue of the NRA magazine, which has an article entitled, “The Two Faces of Geraldo Rivera.” Calling Rivera a “so-called” reporter, the magazine noted that Rivera seemed to have changed his views on gun control once he arrived in Afghanistan. It said, “Rivera, who has made plenty of noise in the past by promoting various anti-gun proposals, revealed recently that while covering the war in Afghanistan, where he doesn’t feel quite so safe, he’s conveniently jumped to the other side of the fence.”

That was a reference to Rivera disclosing that he was carrying a gun in Afghanistan. Rivera had said, “If they’re going to get us, it’s going to be in a gun fight. It’s not going to be a murder. It’s not going to be a crime. It’s going to be a gun fight.” The gun wouldn’t have been of much use against armed soldiers, but Rivera felt more comfortable with it anyway. The NRA added, “Hopefully Rivera will remember that experience when he comes home to the United States, where law-abiding unarmed citizens in some neighborhoods are arguably in more danger than he ever was while traveling with bodyguards in Afghanistan.”

On his show on CNBC, Rivera had responded to shooting incidents with calls for gun control. He attacked NRA President Charlton Heston for defending the second amendment. “How much longer are we gonna take that?” he said. “How much longer are we gonna be wrapping in the flag of patriotism to justify 250 million guns out there? How much longer?” After the shootings at a school in Colorado, Rivera was angry with Joe Waldron, executive director of the Citizen’s Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Rivera said to him, “Don’t you think that your movement, what you stand for, even the Second Amendment itself is rightfully under attack after the carnage in Littleton, Colorado?”

That’s not the only aspect of Rivera’s career that raises eyebrows. During Clinton and NATO’s war against Yugoslavia, Rivera traveled with the Kosovo Liberation Army, a group tainted by connections to terrorists and drug smugglers. Rivera’s response, “They have a checkered past, but so many of us do.” Certainly he does.

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