Geraldo Rivera

Feisty, controversial American investigative news reporter Geraldo Rivera, the man who put the trash in trash journalism and spawned a legion of imitators, finally pulled the plug on his daytime shenanigans (after 11 seasons) to concentrate on mainstream journalism within the NBC news division. Boasting a career crammed with remarkable journalistic highs and embarrassing lows, he had begun garnering the personal and professional respectability he had long craved since renouncing his trademark sensationalism during the mid-1990s. Born in NYC to a Puerto Rican father and a Jewish mother, the handsome, mustachioed Rivera studied to become a lawyer and parlayed his late 60s involvement with a Latino activist group called the Young Lords into a job as a temporary reporter for local station WABC. His frequent appearances on the evening news as the legal spokesman for the Young Lords caught the eye of pioneering news director Al Primo who hired Rivera to reflect the ethnic mix so obvious on the NYC streets (and help satisfy federal minority hiring quotas).

The ambitious and energetic Rivera became a full-time reporter shortly thereafter, and he shocked New Yorkers with his first cause celebre, a 1972 expose of the heinous conditions at the Willowbrook State School, a facility for the care of the mentally retarded. Securing the Zapruder film for its initial TV presentation brought him his first national scoop, and the charismatic Rivera logged considerable on-camera time for the ABC newsmagazines "Good Night, America", "Good Morning, America" and "20/20". Though his crusading approach to TV journalism recalled his earlier activism, he did not escape criticism for what many perceived as an increasingly egotistical and abrasive manner. Some resented his political stances on various issues, while others felt that his flashy, angry style needlessly sensationalized his reporting. "There's no subject ... that Rivera can't trivialize with his tactics" snapped Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times. Things eventually came to a head, and Roone Arledge dismissed him from ABC in 1985.

One of Rivera's first attempts to take charge of his career in the mid-80s proved a major misfire. The eager beaver reporter ringmastered the unveiling of a famous mobster's inner sanctum, but "The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults" (1986), though not a ratings bust with a 31.8 share, was certainly an embarrassment when the expected stash of money, firearms or aged bootleg liquor failed to materialize. Still, the pioneering Rivera went on to do eight more syndicated two-hour primetime documentaries. He made a triumphal entry into the ranks of daytime talk shows with his syndicated "Geraldo!", tweaking the genre with programs devoted to "Exploring Satan's Black Market", "Sexual Secrets...To Tell or Not to Tell" and "Wanted: Elvis! Dead or Alive". Rivera had seemingly found the appropriate media format for his heady combination of journalistic skullduggery and glitzy stylistics, but the fiasco of him brawling with neo-Nazis on a 1988 show is a negative that haunts him to this day.

Though "Rivera Live" (1994- ) debuted in primetime on CNBC several months before the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, Rivera would make inroads back to a respectability forfeited by his post-ABC hijinks with his extensive coverage of the O.J. Simpson affair. His Juice-bashing worked as journalism, as entertainment, as spectacle. "Rivera Live", with its emphasis on legal issues, reminded the audience he was an attorney, an analytical, educated person, and showed him at his very best, in command of thousands of facts, debating articulate people who actually disagreed with him. Taking his cue from his CNBC demeanor, he cleaned up his daytime act in 1996, abandoning "My sister is a teen slut and I want to be one too" format to carve out his little piece of high ground as America's Investigator. Rivera brought his horn-rimmed glasses and seriousness from his nighttime venture to the renamed "The Geraldo Rivera Show", which began offering substantial journalism that examined "tough social issues" on a regular, if not daily, basis.

In keeping with his penchant for responsible reporting, Rivera traded in his syndicated talk show for a bigger role in the NBC news division, signing a three-year deal worth an estimated $3 million annually near the end of 1997. The terms of the contract called for the continuation of "Rivera Live", an additional CNBC primetime program to be developed by Rivera, four primetime programs to be produced by NBC News featuring the journalist and focusing on legal and criminal justice issues, plus his continued legal commentary on "Today". Despite concerns about Rivera's talk-show host image, NBC, reluctant to lose any "star power" to their fledgling competitor, exercised its right to negotiate the deal after he had already accepted an offer to be an anchor on the Fox News Channel. The demise of "The Geraldo Rivera Show" at the conclusion of its 11th season in August of 1998 marked the end of an era in daytime TV and reinforced Rivera's image as a reborn "serious" journalist.

• Also Credited As:
  Gerald Miguel Rivera
• Born:
  July 4, 1943 in New York City, New York, USA
• Job Titles:
  TV host, Investigative reporter, Producer, Documentary writer, Actor, Latino activist, Lawyer, Men s clothing salesman, Merchant marine, Newspaper owner

Family

• Brother: Craig Rivera. younger; worked with Geraldo on 20/20 ; also appeared on the syndicated nightly newsmagazine, Inside Edition
• Brother: Wilfredo Rivera. older; a cousin adopted and raised by Rivera s family
• Daughter: Isabella Holmes Rivera. on born November 7, 1992; mother, C C Dyer
• Daughter: Simone Cruickshank Rivera. born in September 1994; mother, C C Dyer
• Father: Cruz Rivera. Puerto Rican; changed first name to Alan when he converted to Judaism; married Rivera s mother in 1940; died on Thanksgiving 1987 of a heart attack
• Mother: Lillian Rivera. Jewish
• Sister: Irene Hunt. born c. 1941
• Sister: Sharon Rivera. born c. 1947
• Son: Cruz. born in 1987; born to a woman Rivera was briefly involved with before his marriage to C C Dyer; living with mother in Texas in 1997
• Son: Gabriel Miguel Rivera. born in July 1979; mother, Sheri Rivera

Significant Others

• Companion: Erica Levy. born c. 1975; works at CNBC
• Companion: Erica Pressman. worked for Rivera s talk show

Education

• School of Law, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1969
• School of Journalism, Columbia University, New York, New York, 1970
• West Babylon High School, Babylon, New York
• State University of New York Maritime College, Bronx, New York

Milestones

• 1968 Started legal career as a clerk with the Harlem Assertion of Rights Community Action for Legal Services
• 1972 Took a key given him by an angry doctor and sneaked a camera crew into Building 6, which housed the most severely handicapped patients of the Willowbrook School, a huge facility for the mentally retarded on New York s Staten Island; the footage revealing squalor analogous to Auschwitz and the unprecedented time to vent granted him by WABC made Geraldo a local star in NYC
• 1975 Began serving as a correspondent for the information series, Good Morning, America
• 1975 Secured the rights for the first television presentation of the Abraham Zapruder film of the assassination of President John F Kennedy on Good Night, America America (ABC)
• 1977 Became a correspondent for ABC News
• 1978 Joined the primetime news magazine 20/20 as a correspondent; among storied covered was a return to Willowbrook in 1982
• 1985 Fired from ABC for pushing 20/20 to air a story on John and Robert Kennedy s affairs with Marilyn Monroe and complaining bitterly (and publicly lambasting Roone Arledge who had been his biggest supporter) when it did not air; there was also an incident, involving his associate producer and future wife C C Dyer getting caught using an ABC messenger to make a marijuana delivery, which added additional fuel to Arledge s ire
• 1986 First of nine syndicated two-hour primetime documentary specials, the mercilessly hyped The Mystery of Al Capone s Vaults ; received a phenomenal 31.8 rating but was a monumental bust when the vaults yielded nothing
• 1987 Formed production company, the Investigative News Group (date approximate)
• 1988 Rumbled (along with Congress of Racial Equality head Roy Innes) with neo-Nazis, suffering a broken nose from a flying chair; it has remained the single most memorable (infamous) event of his daytime talk show
• 1989 Formed production company, Maravilla Productions, named after the Spanish word for marvelous
• 1991 On March 1st, Geraldo! began airing in the former USSR via Soviet Channel 2 x 2, making it the first US television program scheduled on a daily basis by Soviet TV
• 1992 Played the role of Ted Mayne on the TV-movie, Perry Mason: The Case of the Reckless Romeo (NBC)
• 1993 Opened the Broadcast Boxing Club, a fitness center in NYC
• 1994 Launched Rivera Live , a daily primetime show airing on CNBC; got tremendous mileage worrying the O.J. bone (an estimated 550 hours); also concentrated on what he called Zippergate , the investigation of the relationship between US President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky
• 1996 Issued his personal Bill of Rights and Responsibilities and subsequently steered clear of the most egregiously sleazoid topics, carving out a little piece of high ground as America s investigator
• 1997 Appeared as interviewee (along with Phil Donahue, Maury Povich and Morton Downey Jr) on Talked to Death , an HBO America Undercover documentary revealing what goes on backstage at some tabloid TV shows, emphasizing the do-anything-for-ratings mentality
• 1997 Traded in his syndicated talkshow for a bigger role in the NBC news division, signing a three-year contract worth an estimated $3 million annually; NBC exercised its right to negotiate the deal after Rivera had already accepted an offer to be an anchor on the Fox News Channel
• 1998 Began contributing reports to NBC s Today show
• 1998 Debuted half-hour nightly newscast Upfront Tonight on CNBC (September)
• 2001 Switched to Fox News Channel in order to travel to Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden; began airing the weekend show At Large with Geraldo Rivera
• 2005 Began a weekday syndicated show, Geraldo at Large
• Grew up in NYC and West Babylon, Long Island, NY, where both parents were working in the cafeteria of a defense contractor
• Hosted and served as managing editor of the daily investigative magazine series, Now It Can Be Told (syndicated)
• Hosted daily talk show, Geraldo! , which became known as The Geraldo Rivera Show in September 1996; taped last broadcast in May 1998
• Hosted series of late night TV programs, Good Night, America (ABC)
• Passed the bar exam for New York state after studying at Brooklyn College
• Was a spokesperson for a New York City Latino activist group called the Young Lords
• Worked as a reporter for WABC-TV
• Worked as a reporter for the syndicated nightly program, Entertainment Tonight