Matea Gold in the LA Times writes about the long term plans of the media and how the story affects them….

CNN’s Anderson Cooper has remained in the region since the hurricane hit, with no immediate plans to leave.

“Those of us who were here and have had the privilege to cover it, and to witness these triumphs and these tragedies, will never forget it and will carry it with us,” Cooper said. “That’s part of the fear of leaving, that people will forget and coverage will go elsewhere. And there are so many answers we need to get.”

Reporters who have moved onto other stories are still haunted by the images they saw. Fox News correspondent Steve Harrigan will head to Baghdad on Monday for a monthlong stint, but he can’t stop thinking about an elderly couple he saw waiting for help on a New Orleans bridge for days, without food or water.

(more…)

The LA Times Tim Rutten turns in a strange piece. It’s hard to be sure if he’s on Rivera’s side or not….

We don’t trust certain critics — whatever their field — more than others simply because somebody has given them a title. It’s because we can see the rational interplay of interpretation and facts in their work.

The notion that the thing we call authority rests on that interaction is hardly new. More than 1,000 years ago, Carolingian theologian John Scotus Erigena wrote that “reason naturally creates authority, but authority cannot create reason.”

Reason — even the reasoning of television critics — rests on facts, which is why their abuse makes it possible to wrong even Geraldo Rivera.

All this notwithstanding, it’s tempting to entertain the notion that, in Alessandra Stanley, Rivera’s work finally has found the critic it deserves.