The Gist: Sand Gags

I’ll miss the slightly daffy Peter Arnett. His live reports from Baghdad on NBC at least offered an alternative to the 24/7 performances of nerdy, six-figure-salaried embedded tv reporters, straddling tanks for a testosterone rush and slumming with the working-class troops.

Geraldo Rivera, on the other hand, should be deployed to the farthest reaches of outer Mongolia–forever. I remember catching him back in February on Fox reporting from Turkey shortly before the Turkish Parliament was to vote on allowing U.S. troops there, telling us that the Turks would "do the right thing" because they really do love America. Another great Geraldo prediction.

Witnessing the war’s two media scandals last week, it was pretty clear how differently Arnett and Rivera were treated–not just by the critics, but by their own networks. While Arnett was booted from NBC and banished to a Fleet Street tabloid for giving an interview to Iraqi state television, the loathsome Rivera left Iraq in the bosom of the Fox News Channel. He departed the country for Kuwait "voluntarily," as Fox likes to put it, as the network pulled strings with the Pentagon to make sure Rivera wasn’t perceived as having been kicked out by the military.

Rivera may have given away troop positions on live television–and during the war in Afghanistan he lied on camera, claiming to be in a combat zone when he was nowhere near it–but one thing you have to say about Roger Ailes and Fox: They never admit they’re wrong. In their minds they are always "fair and balanced," whether they’re spouting White House propaganda or giving away valuable information to the enemy. And that’s one reason why they’re on top.

The way MSNBC responded to Arnett, on the other hand, is indicative of why that network is on the bottom of the cable-tv trash heap. Rivera was right about one thing in his otherwise paranoid claims that his former employer, NBC, was "spreading lies" about him: "MSNBC is so pathetic a cable news network they have to do anything they can to attract attention." That includes hiring–and firing–anyone at whim, so long as there’s a remote chance of seeing those sagging ratings lift.

For sheer inconsistency, in both wartime and peacetime, you really can’t beat the desperate souls at MSNBC. It was amusing to watch honcho Erik Sorenson and the higher-ups at NBC scramble to figure out what to do about Arnett’s Iraqi tv interview. Arnett merely repeated what just about every former general was then saying to the rest of the planet via every other television network: that Bush’s war plan was flawed. After first issuing a statement supporting Arnett and defending his decision to give the interview, the network brass turned around and axed him, deciding sanctimony to be the better path.

"It’s just inappropriate and arguably unpatriotic," Sorenson solemnly declared about Arnett’s actions. He told the Washington Post that, while watching the interview, he was hoping "there was a guy with an AK-47 behind the curtain" so as to justify Arnett’s actions.

Suddenly MSNBC has standards?

This is the very same Sorenson who last month defended giving a talk show to gutter trash Michael Savage, the hate-radio babbler who says immigrants are "defecating on your country and breeding out of control," and warns, with regard to homeland security, that we "need racist stereotypes right now of our enemy in order to encourage our warriors to kill the enemy." If you want to play the "arguably unpatriotic" game, you can certainly say that promoting Savage’s mad ravings might do far more to destabilize America than anything Peter Arnett ever said to Iraqi state television.

Arnett apologized for his infraction–live on the Today show, expressing remorse for doing a stupid thing–but Sorenson showed him no mercy, complaining that he’d gotten "thousands" of emails from viewers, but perhaps more so realizing that Fox would be barbequing Arnett at any moment. Savage, meanwhile, not only never apologized for having called MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield a "mind-slut" and having called MSNBC More Snotty Nonsense by Creeps; he publicly threatened to get John Ashcroft on the butts of those criticizing MSNBC for giving him a show, claiming he was going to call in a favor owed to him by George W. Bush, for whom he says he’s brought votes.

Sorenson nonetheless defended the guy further, saying that having Savage on MSNBC was all about respecting diversity of opinion and the "marketplace of ideas." Savage, Sorenson said, is "brash, passionate and smart," a man who provides "compelling opinion and analysis with an edge."

Hearing this, I was hoping there was a guy with an AK-47 behind the curtain.

Now MSNBC has the deranged Savage making phone-in appearances on everyone else’s program on the network, where he comments on the war and related stories, and promotes his show. I thought Chris Mathews was about to lose his dinner last week, forced to interview Savage about his thoughts on Rivera and Arnett. Savage railed against the two as treasonous, and repeatedly questioned their patriotism.

Arnett wasn’t unpatriotic, just arrogant. He thought he could remain neutral about the war while at the same time being used for Iraq’s propaganda purposes. Some speculated he gave the interview to try to stay on the good side of his Iraqi government minders, who would throw him out of the country if they didn’t like his coverage–a kinder, gentler version, perhaps, of having an AK-47 to his back. (Geraldo isn’t unpatriotic either, by the way–he’s just an idiot).

NBC had every right to fire Arnett for his misjudgment, but that cuts both ways: MSNBC has every right to fire Savage, too, without it being considered an infringement of free speech. Accusations of censorship were hurled full-force a few weeks ago against the groups calling for MSNBC to dump Savage, but few have said a thing about Arnett’s firing in that regard, underscoring that it was the kind of speech–not the act of muzzling it–that is really at the core of the critics’ and MSNBC’s actions.

Sorenson, meanwhile, has proved himself to be a pompous hypocrite. Just last October he complained to a crowd at DePauw University in Indiana that, "a lot of journalists to this day are cowed by the patriotic fervor that’s in our country in the wake of September 11th." With friends like him at the helm protecting us against feeling "cowed," we really don’t need any more enemies.

Michelangelo Signorile can be reached at [www.signorile.com](http://www.signorile.com).