Geraldo Rivera is an American journalist, lawyer and television host whose career spans more than five decades, from local investigative reporting in New York to network news magazines, a long-running daytime talk show and more than two decades at Fox News. Since 2024 he has been a correspondent-at-large for NewsNation. He is not a UFO reporter; his place in the UAP record rests on a personal sighting he has described on air with a mix of candor and skepticism.

Born Gerald Michael Rivera in Manhattan on July 4, 1943, he earned a business degree from the University of Arizona in 1965 and a law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1969, then worked as a poverty lawyer and frequent attorney for the Young Lords, the Puerto Rican activist group. WABC-TV hired him in 1970 as a reporter for Eyewitness News, and his 1972 exposé of abuse and neglect at the Willowbrook State School won a Peabody Award. At ABC he hosted Good Night America, which on March 6, 1975, gave the Zapruder film of President Kennedy's assassination its first national telecast, and he reported for 20/20 until a 1985 dispute with the network ended his tenure.

In 1986 his live two-hour special on Al Capone's vaults uncovered nothing of value, and his syndicated talk show Geraldo ran from 1987 to 1998, gaining notoriety for confrontational guests, including a 1988 brawl in which his nose was broken. He hosted Rivera Live on CNBC from 1994 to 2001 before joining Fox News as a war correspondent in November 2001. In 2003 the military removed him from an embedded assignment in Iraq for breaking reporting rules, for which he apologized. He became a rotating co-host of The Five in January 2022 and left Fox News in June 2023 after 23 years, saying he had been fired from the program.

His UFO connection is personal and anecdotal. On May 17, 2022, as The Five discussed the House Intelligence subcommittee hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena held that day, the first congressional hearing on the subject in more than 50 years, Rivera said, "The only time I ever saw a UFO, I was stoned on ecstasy," adding that the object "tracked me everywhere I went." He has also described being followed by a UFO while sailing in the Bermuda Triangle, in a November 2019 episode of the celebrity paranormal series Famously Afraid and in a Fox News Radio interview in which he said he remained a skeptic.

At NewsNation, which announced his hiring in February 2024, Rivera appears regularly with anchor Connell McShane on "The Daily Take," a segment of the afternoon NewsNation Live block, and on panels such as Elizabeth Vargas Reports. His 2026 commentary dealt with the midterm elections, the war with Iran, Hispanic voters' views of President Trump, artificial intelligence and the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, which he said was "Watergate to me," rather than with UAP. His significance lies in a half-century of television journalism, from the Willowbrook exposé to war reporting, that made him one of the most recognizable and debated figures in American news, and his offhand UFO anecdote remains a minor footnote to that career.