Geraldo Rivera: Legendary Journalist and Adventurer Continues to Support the Community

In 1972, Geraldo Rivera changed investigative journalism, and the rights of the disabled, forever.

Working for Eyewitness News, Rivera cultivated sources at Willowbrook State School, a home for disabled children and adults on Staten Island. Doctors and nurses working at Willowbrook helped Rivera gain access to the home, and what was reported and broadcast is still one of the most horrific scenes of neglect and abuse in medical history.

Walking through the hospital he encountered patients left alone, soiled and uncared for, with sores and lesions. They rocked and cried, pleading for help when they were able. Many seemed feral, completely unable to care for themselves and not receiving the care they needed for even the most basic of human needs.

The report changed the way people with disabilities are cared for across the country.

One of media’s most enduring broadcasters, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist Rivera recently parted ways with Fox News, where he was a senior correspondent and host of breaking news specials, the Geraldo Rivera Reports. He was also a rotating co-host on the Fox News Channel’s hit program The Five, and over the years he provided regular reports and commentary on FNC’s Fox and Friends, Hannity, The Kelly File and The O’Reilly Factor.

He joined the network in 2001 as a war correspondent following the 9/11 attacks. Most recently, Rivera reported from Charleston, South Carolina on the horrific, racially motivated massacre in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and on the riots that followed the death in police custody of Freddie Gray in Baltimore.

Deeply engaged in reporting the recent spike in urban violence, Rivera provided live coverage of the funeral of the fallen NYPD officers Wenjian Liu, Raphel Ramos and Brian Moore.

Rivera hosted hour-long specials, exposing the cushy life in prison of condemned killer Scott Peterson, on the 35th anniversary of the overdose death of Elvis Presley, and on the untimely death of his longtime friend, comedian Joan Rivers.

In 2009, Rivera secured an exclusive interview with Joe Jackson, just after the death of his son Michael. Rivera had previously interviewed the late Michael Jackson on the evening before his 2005 trial and subsequent acquittal for child molestation charges.

A native New Yorker outraged by the September 11 terror attacks, Rivera took a major pay cut and left CNBC’s Rivera Live to become a FNC senior war correspondent, providing weeks of dramatic live reports from Tora Bora, Afghanistan during the initial siege on Osama Bin Laden’s hideout.

He returned to Afghanistan 10 more times to cover Operation Enduring Freedom and later traveled to Bethlehem to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict live from the siege of the Church of the Nativity.

One of his favorite live television moments came on May 1, 2011 when Rivera anchored FNC’s coverage of the successful raid that took down bin Laden.

Before becoming a member of the original cast of ABC’s Good Morning America, Rivera presented the first television broadcast of the infamous Abraham Zapruder film of the assassination of President John Kennedy as host of ABC’s Good Night America.

He then began an eight-year association with ABC’s 20/20 as an investigative reporter. One of his hour-long reports, “The Elvis Cover-Up” was for more than two decades 20/20’s highest rated show.

In 1987, Rivera began producing and hosting The Geraldo Rivera Show, which ran for 11 years. In 1998, he hosted a series of investigative specials on NBC. The winner of the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy journalism award (his third) for his NBC News documentary on “Women In Prison,” and the Scripps Howard Foundation national journalism award for “Back to Bedlam,” Rivera has received more than 170 awards for journalism, including the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award, three national and seven local Emmys, two Columbia-DuPont and two additional Scripps Howard Journalism Awards.

Rivera is a veteran foreign correspondent who has been on the frontlines in virtually every international conflict since 1973. He has expertise in the Afghanistan region, covering the international drug wars of tribal territories in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

His vast war experience has spanned the violent coup in Chile and the Yom Kippur War to the civil wars in Guatemala, the Philippines and Nicaragua as well as the ethnic conflicts in Lebanon (1980–1983) and Bosnia and Kosovo (1998–1999).

Prior to joining Fox News, Rivera served as host of CNBC’s top-rated prime time show, Rivera Live, where his critically acclaimed coverage of the O.J. Simpson civil trial verdict set an all-time CNBC ratings record.

An avid sailor who circumnavigated the globe, skippered four Marion-to-Bermuda races and took his boat “Voyager” 1,400 miles up the Amazon River, Rivera is a graduate of the University of Arizona and Brooklyn Law School and is the author of seven books, including two bestsellers, Exposing Myself and His Panic.

He is a philanthropist who donates and raises millions to aid various causes including education and the care and treatment of the autistic. He is married to the former Erica Michelle Levy and has five children.

Todd Shapiro is an award-winning publicist and associate publisher of Dan’s Papers.