Word: rivera
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Reports like these have earned Rivera the reputation of a crusader. They have also brought him unusual freedom. He and Cameraman Martin Berman have separate headquarters away from newsroom hustle in a cluttered basement office known as "Geraldo's Bodega." Rivera simply notifies the station when he has a report ready for broadcast. "Reporters are paid for each appearance on the air," says Rivera. "It is the greatest single cause of TV news mediocrity. It fosters quantity rather than quality...
...Rivera's favored status and his independence have hardly made him popular among his colleagues. Some resent his leapfrogging past others with more experience. Others point to his aggressive tactics. Last fall, for instance, Rivera decided to cover the Israeli war. When the station's decision was to send no one, Rivera dashed over the station director's head to the network and wangled an O.K. Says one WABC executive, "Geraldo lines people up behind him to fight for what he wants, and then plays them off against one another...
...most serious charge against Rivera is that his reporting is blindly onesided. In reply, Rivera is fond of quoting Edward R. Murrow: "On some stories there is no other side." Few would blame him for his editorial outrage at Willowbrook-"We've got to close that damned place down." On his first three Good-Night shows, however, he has taken stands in favor of decriminalization of marijuana, granting amnesty for draft evaders, and setting up quasi-legal red-light districts as a solution to the prostitution problem...
...Rivera's avowed "sacred cause" is "to use television as an instrument of social change." He is not humble: "I don't care about being Walter Cronkite. Kissinger is more my hero. I consider myself both a newsman and a newsmaker in effecting change in society. It was frustrating to be limited to a local audience," he adds. "As a local newsman, the most powerful man I could influence was the mayor...
Good-Night, America gave some credence to the rumor that Rivera is being groomed to take over Dick Cavett's old nightly slot. Network executives deny it, contending that he is not ready to be on full time. Rivera thinks otherwise. "I think I could do a 90-minute show every night with the right kind of staff." His idea of the right kind of staff? "An army of young, committed investigative teams who would rove the world reporting subjects relevant to me, not necessarily to ABC News President Elmer Lower." That's big thinking, Geraldo...