To say that the suicide of model Ruslana Korshunova has been sensationalized might be an understatement. Like soldiers on the battlefield, the model was given a posthumous field promotion to “supermodel” by many headlines. But while upping Korshunova’s status was a very complementary way to sexy up a cover story, what happened last night on TV was not. If you were to guess whose television news program would be so sensationalistic as to show video of the model's bloodied body being covered by a sheet, you’d probably guess right.
Geraldo Rivera.
Geraldo At Large's trash TV lineage is not a secret to those who’ve seen Rivera in his more sanitized role on Fox News. He evolved from ring-leading talk shows on “Men in Lace Panties and the Women Who Love Them” to falsely claiming his news cameras were at the scene of a friendly fire incident. Still, rolling tape of the corpse of a woman who had taken a nine-story fall is more grease than anyone could expect.
Fox News claims that showing the footage was a “producer’s error,” and perhaps it was. Geraldo certainly knew what was onscreen and did nothing to take it off. As the image of her “broken body being lifted off the Manhattan sidewalk” was shown, Rivera noted that “this image stands in stark contrast to the fairytale images of the famous face and chestnut hair that made her modeling’s next big thing.”
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In the upper left hand corner, a banner reads "Exclusive." I would hope so.
