After 23 years with the Fox Network, Geraldo Rivera has officially quit.
Geraldo Rivera has been known for stirring up controversy throughout his career. Journalist, attorney, author and political commentator, he is best known for creating some of the most over-the-top television spectacles.
Rivera’s 1986 special broadcast, “The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults,” was one of the most hyped TV events in history — and one of the biggest busts. It became legendary as a live television failure when after a huge buildup and hyperbole on Geraldo’s part, touting the tremendous historical treasures that would be found in the newly-discovered vault of the infamous gangster, nothing was found.
Then, in 1988, he hosted a two-hour special called “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground” which was criticized for being sensationalist.
In 1994, he hosted a show called “Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills” which was criticized for being exploitative of a tragedy– and the same charge was leveled against “The Geraldo Rivera Show” in 2001.
On Friday’s Fox & Friends Rivera got a big send off. The bittersweet farewell came one day after Rivera told fans that he had quit the network after losing his slot on The Five. On Fox & Friends, Rivera shared more information about why he was leaving as a longtime Fox reporter.
“I am leaving Fox,” Rivera announced on the Friday morning show. “I was fired from The Five so then I said, ‘Well, I might as well resign totally,’ and so I quit and today is my last day.”
The Fox News correspondent-at-large previously cited “a growing tension that goes beyond editorial differences” as the reason for his exit. Those tensions took a backseat during Friday’s broadcast, which found Rivera and the Fox & Friends hosts focusing on his career highlights.
Rivera said, “I want to leave, though, not thinking about those things. I want to leave thinking about how wonderful everyone has been to me over the last 23 years.”
The tribute included a montage with clips of Rivera covering everything from the Afghanistan War to Dancing With the Stars. His coworkers even took the time to put on fake mustaches to match Rivera’s signature facial hair to kid him. All in good fun.
During the tribute, the 79-year-old reporter explains that his time with Fox News began in 2001 as a direct result of the 9/11 attacks.
“When the towers went down, I had to become a war correspondent,” Rivera shared. “I had a great show, the number one-rated show on CNBC, but they wouldn’t let me go to war.”
Rivera continued, “It established a relationship with Fox that people would not ordinarily think of as a natural relationship because of political ideologies, me being more on the progressive side than most of my colleagues. But it worked out. Everybody was open-minded and openhearted.”
During his tenure at Fox, Rivera served as a war correspondent, weekend anchor, and host of the Fox Nation series Cops: All Access. In 2022, he was made an official member of The Five, the network’s afternoon roundtable talk show that covers current events, political issues, and pop culture news. Speaking to the Associated Press, he said that being at Fox has been “a rocky ride but it has also been an exhilarating adventure that spanned quite a few years.” Rivera added, “I hope it’s not my last adventure.”
A similar sentiment was expressed on Twitter, where Rivera admitted to followers that he was thinking about retirement but struggling with the idea of leaving his career behind entirely.
“I am 80 and I’ve been doing this for 52 years,” he wrote in a tweet. “The problem with retiring though is my restless energy when it concerns issues important to the American people. I feel the need to speak out, as long as some people want to listen.”
If there is anything that Geraldo will be remembered for it is precisely these things: his love of hyperbole, his inability to keep silent when he had an opinion to voice, and for taking a boatload of mockery and ridicule with grace.
