Geraldo Could Use Time on Sidelines

That rotten 1st Amendment.

If only television could be guided by the NBA, which last week gave the kibosh to stormy, recalcitrant Latrell Sprewell, otherwise known as the Bay Area Strangler.

Sprewell is a gifted jock and the most talented player on the Golden State Warriors, but also an epic pain in the butt. So because he attacked and tried to throttle his coach, P.J. Carlesimo, the pro basketball league banished him for a year without pay, a day after his team had terminated the remainder of his $32-million contract.

Hey, I like that. Overcoming a previous wimpiness toward wayward stars, basketball this time came down hard. You misbehave, you pay. You assault, you go directly into exile, without passing “Go.�

So I was thinking how nice it would be if that principle could be applied to TV. Although he didn’t physically assault anyone, the guy I have in mind is a longtime offender who did commit an ugly act recently, one for which he, too, deserves some time off without pay.

He’s Geraldo Rivera, also both gifted and a giant pain.

Two weeks ago, Rivera presided over a mock trial of the parents of murder victim JonBenet Ramsey that he spread across two episodes of his syndicated “Geraldo Rivera� talk show.

There’s no denying that the Ramseys have acted weirdly at times, and negative rumors began flying about them almost immediately after the unsolved slaying of 6-year-old JonBenet in Boulder, Colo., nearly a year ago.

Yet--and excuse me for stressing this once more--the Ramseys have not been indicted or formally charged anywhere except on talk radio and in those expanding outposts of television that spend much of their time hemorrhaging innuendo and speculation all over the airwaves.

This amnesiac thing has got to stop. Has nothing been learned from the past--from those damaging, knee-jerk, premature media lynchings in the TV age ranging from the McMartin preschool case to the Richard Jewell non-case, all of whose falsely accused protagonists appeared so, so guilty at the time?

In a press conference Friday, the Boulder police commander now heading the investigation said that JonBenet’s parents are not suspects, but “remain under an umbrella of suspicion.�

Perhaps one or both of JonBenet’s parents were involved in her murder, perhaps not. Perhaps one or both will be charged and indicted this week or next week or next month or next century, perhaps never.

As of today, they are as innocent under the law as you or I.

That’s why subjecting them, in absentia, to a cockamamie televised mock trial, replete with six-person jury, judge (former Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Burton S. Katz), prosecutor and defense attorney was the absolute pits--an irresponsible, repugnant bit of stagecraft that further stigmatized them.

Some of the “witnesses� turned out to be people (including tabloid reporters) who had trashed the Ramseys on previous “Geraldo Rivera Show� episodes. They appeared on videotape--the usual rules of jurisprudence, as always, not being applicable when the hangman is Rivera.

In fact, Rivera’s show skewed the outcome. Instead of making this a criminal trial, it substituted rules for a civil trial that allow a much lower standard for finding guilt (instead of “beyond a reasonable doubt�), thereby making “conviction� more likely. As it turned out, the “jury� voted guilty, 4-2.

So bounce Rivera for continuing to judge and ruminate from afar, smearing people for the sole purpose of putting on a titillating, highly promotable two-parter during the November ratings sweeps. Like Sprewell, give him a year off, and then let’s talk about it.

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But it doesn’t work that way in a free society in which trashy, irresponsible TV talk shows and the Geraldo Riveras who host them are part of the price Americans pay for freedom of expression.

Even if the spirit of the 1st Amendment didn’t prevail, moreover, the powerful magnetism of profit inevitably would. Just as sports reporters are speculating that Sprewell will land with another NBA team after his suspension--his value as an athlete overshadowing his propensity for mayhem--so, too, is Rivera a commodity much too profitable to exclude from the arena, the tabloid nature of his 11-year-old daytime show notwithstanding.

Rivera began his TV career as a reporter for WABC-TV in New York, then moved on to ABC’s “20/20� before leaving in a dispute and creating his own syndicated show, on which he has demonstrated great skills as an impresario of subjects hot and passionate. His record for pandering speaks for itself.

Instead of being shunned by mainstream TV journalism, though, he is getting embraced in some circles, and his career is now about to change directions once again.

A recent bidding war for his services, between the Fox News Channel and NBC News, was won by the latter.

The six-year contract that Rivera signed with NBC last month, for a reported $24 million plus other financial perks, provides for him to host four NBC news specials a year on criminal justice and to continue as legal commentator on the “Today� program. In addition, he will create and anchor a news program on the CNBC cable channel, where his popular “Rivera Live� interview series (on which he has been relatively more circumspect than the syndicated “Geraldo Rivera Show�) will continue to run.

You can draw your own conclusions about what hiring Rivera says about the direction of NBC News under its president, Andrew Lack, who also oversees MSNBC and now, too, CNBC in prime time. As part of the deal, Rivera is giving up his syndicated talk show (and you’d hope the mock trials), but he still lugs to NBC News a ton of tabloid baggage difficult to reconcile even with a network division that has risen dramatically in the ratings by offering viewers less hard news about issues that significantly affect their lives than about JonBenet Ramsey and other such high-profile cases.

Rumors that Rivera’s NBC deal also would include him substituting for anchor Tom Brokaw on “NBC Nightly News� turned out to be false, leaving that line uncrossed for the moment. Once you cross one line, however, crossing the next is that much easier.