By RICK KUSHMAN December 10, 2002

(Editors: This also moved on the Scripps-McClatchy Western Service wire.)

You have to love Geraldo Rivera. His late-career attempts to define himself as an actual journalist have made him one of America's most reliable sources of amusement.

The guy's a walking comedy pilot. His latest high jinks include attempts to get the respected Center for Media and Public Affairs (part of the University of Virginia) to rescind a $10,000 prize for investigative reporting on the media it gave to Baltimore Sun reporter David Folkenflik.

Folkenflik's sin? He reported that Rivera had made a mistake.

Here's the background. In 2001, Rivera quit his cheesy CNBC talk show because America had the gall to fight a war without inviting him along. He moved to Fox News, went to Afghanistan and brought his unique brand of hype and overstatement to war reporting.

Then last December, Rivera reported he was at the site where friendly fire killed three Americans in Kandahar. Turns out he was hundreds of miles away at Tora Bora at the time, as reported on Dec. 12 by Folkenflik and the Sun.

When questioned, Rivera said he was confused and meant he was at a friendly-fire incident in Tora Bora, but, as the Sun showed, that second incident occurred three days after Rivera's report.

Since then, Rivera hired another reporter to discredit the Sun's story and started a campaign of challenging Folkenflik's manhood. Then, when the Center for Media and Public Affairs announced its award, Rivera wrote to argue against it.

The good news is that all of this is available on the center's Web site - www.cmpa.com - and it's a good, if bizarre, read.

Rivera's argument, as you would expect, degenerates into hyperbole and self-congratulation. He calls Folkenflik's report "bloated beyond the worst tabloid excess" and says, "I wonder what he would do in a similar situation assuming he had the courage to put himself in harm's way (which I understand he never has)."

Rivera also continues to get things wrong - including days of the week.

He said, for instance, that Dec. 5, 2001, was a Sunday. (It was a Wednesday.)

He said that Folkenflik got a tip from a cable news source - the Sun says he did not - and that the story mocked Rivera's recitation of the Lord's Prayer on camera. It did not.

Rivera's explanation of his mistake - that local Afghans told him there was a friendly-fire incident nearby - is full of assumptions without proof.

But the worst goof is that Rivera insists the Sun says he made the mistake on purpose; in essence, faking the report. All the story said was that there was no friendly-fire incident at Rivera's spot.

An editor for the Sun also responded on the Web site, and his argument is a much calmer recitation of facts and reports. It says the Pentagon has determined there was no friendly-fire incident where Rivera was.

The Sun said it showed Rivera's tape to two Marine experts and one from the Air Force. The Marines said Rivera's location may have been bombed, but it had to be weeks before he got there. The Air Force expert said he was certain the area had not been hit by a large bomb like the one responsible for the deaths in Kandahar.

Rivera makes one more large error. The man who has built a career on stunts - Al Capone's empty vault, anyone? - chest-beating and endless hours dissecting matters like the JonBenet Ramsey case assumes some people might consider him a serious journalist.

Oh, and then there is this. Even as he tries to defend himself, Rivera can't resist self-promotion. "I had intended to spend this past weekend working on this presentation," he writes to the media center, "but instead spent it chasing the Beltway Sniper."

-- Anonymous, December 11, 2002