Fox News journalist Geraldo Rivera sparked outrage this week after he made controversial comments about slain teenager Trayvon Martin’s death.
On Friday, Rivera made headlines when he suggested that Martin, who was unarmed when he was shot dead by self-appointed neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, was partially responsible for his own death because he was wearing a hoodie when killed.
"I'll bet you money, if he didn't have that hoodie on, that nutty neighborhood watch guy wouldn't have responded in that violent and aggressive way," Rivera said.
“I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was,” Rivera said on Fox & Friends.
But this isn’t the first time the half-Puerto Rican journalist finds himself in hot water.
In 1986, Rivera shot a two-hour special broadcast, "The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults,” which got a lot of attention and was one of the biggest disappointments in television history.
When he finally opened the infamous gangster's secret vault, there were only empty bottles and dirt. Now, the failed stunt became a pop culture landmark, and “Al Capone’s vault” is now synonymous for a heavily hyped event that amounts to absolutely nothing, according to Politico.com.
In 2001, while in Afghanistan, Rivera claimed in a Dec. 6 dispatch to have choked up after saying the Lord's Prayer over the "hallowed ground" in Afghanistan where "friendly fire took so many of our, our men and the mujahedeen yesterday", according to The Baltimore Sun, who first reported Rivera was actually hundreds of miles away from the friendly fire incident.
Fox News Channel claims it was an honest mistake.
How Rivera could have blamed the “fog of war” for an event near Kandahar with one where he actually was in Tora Bora is beyond us, especially since the Tora Bora incident occurred three days after Rivera’s report.
One thing is for sure, Geraldo Rivera's "mistakes" and mishaps definitely bring in the crowd.
Here are ten things you didn’t know about controversial journalist Geraldo Rivera:
