Geraldo Calls Minutemen ‘Vigilantes’

Geraldo Rivera, senior correspondent for Fox News, told a group of Hispanic journalists vigilantes had created “hysteria along the borders” and advised his colleagues not to “let your newsroom push you around on the issue of immigration.”

“Bust them on their hypocrisy,” Rivera said at the annual awards gala of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in Washington last week, according to a report by the Robert C. Maynard Institute of Journalism Education.

Rivera, who served as honorary gala chairman of the event, announced from the hotel stage that he was donating $80,000 to NAHJ and $20,000 to Unity: Journalists of Color.

“In vast sections of the country, there would not be a lawn mowed or a dish washed but for illegal immigrants,” said Rivera. “I’m for not being embarrassed about who we are. If we make it, you can’t forget where you come from.”

Rivera was not the only speaker to raise the “hysteria” issue in an evening that otherwise honored journalists whose prize-winning stories largely involved violence, immigration and tragic death.