WHO IS GERALDO RIVERA?
Geraldo Rivera, born Gerald Michael Riviera, on July 4, 1943 at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, New York to Lillian Friedman, a waitress and Cruz "Allen" Rivera (Oct 1, 1915-Nov 1987), a restaurant worker and cab driver.
Rivera is of Puerto Rican and Russian descent. His father was Puerto Rican and his mother is Ashkenazi Russian Jewish. Rivera, who grew up in Manhattan and West Babylon, New York, was raised "mostly Jewish and had a Bar Mitzvah.
Rivera is of Puerto Rican and Russian descent. His father was Puerto Rican and his mother is Ashkenazi Russian Jewish. Rivera, who grew up in Manhattan and West Babylon, New York, was raised "mostly Jewish and had a Bar Mitzvah.
The defense attorney, former talk show host, writer, reporter and journalist played varsity lacrosse as goalie while attending the University of Arizona. He attended the State University of New York Maritime College from September 1961 through May 1963 where he was a member of the rowing team.
The 67-year-old father of five earned his Juris Doctorate from the Brooklyn Law School in 1969, undertaking postgraduate work at the University of Pennsylavannia that same year before briefly attending Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1970.
Rivera, who has been married five times, was a member of New York City's finest (NYPD) for a brief period of time after college where he worked as an investigator. He returned to law representing a New York based Puerto Rican activist group and the Young Lords.
The Tau Delta Phi fraternity member got his first break in the journalism industry from news producer Al Primo who offered Rivera a job as a reporter but didn't care for his name, "Gerald" (he wanted something more Latin) so the two men agreed to go with the pronunciation used by the Puerto Rican side of Rivera's family: Geraldo, and so a legendary, controversial journalist with an affinity for melodramatic, high-profile stories was born.
In 1972, his coverage of the abuse and neglect of mentally retarded patients at Staten Island's Willowbrook State School garnered national attention and earned the young reporter a Peabody Award. From there he went on to appear in programs such as 20/20 and Nightline. It was the beginning of a blossoming career in journalism for the Russian Boricua.
From Rivera's Wiki Page:
Around this time, Rivera also began hosting ABC's Good Night America. The show featured the famous refrain from Arlo Guthrie's hit "City Of New Orleans" (written by Steve Goodman) as the theme. An episode of the program aired in 1975 showed the first national telecast of the historic Zapruder Film.
After Elvis Presley died in 1977, various media mistakenly reported that he had died from a heart attack. Rivera then investigated Presley's prescription drug records and concluded that he had died from multiple drug intake. His conclusion caused Tennessee medical authorities to later revoke the medical license of Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, for over prescribing.
In October 1985, ABC's Roone Arledge refused to air a report done by Sylvia Chase, for 20/20 on the relationship between Marilyn Monroe and John and Robert Kennedy. Rivera publicly criticized Arledge's journalistic integrity, claiming that Arledge's friendship with the Kennedy family (for example, Pierre Salinger, a former Kennedy aide, worked for ABC News at the time) had caused him to spike the story; as a result, Rivera was fired. Sylvia Chase quit 20/20, although she returned to ABC....MORE
By The Star-Ledger...Follow Link for Full Article
The man who turned reporting into an extreme sport, Geraldo Rivera is celebrating 40 years on the beat and in the studio this weekend, The Star-Ledger reported.
The lawyer-turned-journalist is a divisive figure, all bluster and drama. A symbol of his machismo is his moustache, which has remained a constant through four decades of fashion trends.
A retrospective show will air tonight and tomorrow at 10 on the Fox News Channel, where he hosts a weekly diary of world events. “Geraldo at Large” will trace his career back to Labor Day weekend 1970, when he went into the field for the first time as an “Eyewitness News” contributor. It wasn’t any kind of bombshell, just an interview with the losing candidate for New York’s state attorney general office.
The Monmouth resident’s tabloid misadventures have set ratings records and spawned thousands of punch lines. When he plied open Al Capone’s vault on a syndicated 1986 special, he didn’t find gangster relics, just dust and concrete.
Still, the program drew an estimated 28 million viewers. Another notorious moment was an incident involving a flying chair and scuffling skinheads on Rivera’s talk show in 1988.
Although those are defining pop culture moments, the New York native has also earned a clutch of Emmy and Peabody prizes for his reporting. In 1972, he uncovered abuse at a Staten Island school for youngsters with learning disabilities. He broke the news that Elvis Presley’s death in....MORE
GERALDO RIVERA BREAKS HIS NOSE - SKINHEAD BRAWL 1988
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