As the youngest of five children, Craig Rivera grew up with two older brothers (Geraldo Rivera and Wilfredo Rivera) and two older sisters (Sharon Rivera and Irene Rivera). Raised in New York's West Babylon, he elected to attend college out of state at Pennsylvania's Kutztown University. He played lacrosse and majored in Communications & Media Studies at Kutztown, and he returned to New York in 1977 for his college internship. Specifically, he interned with ABC News alongside his brother Geraldo (whom had indisputably established himself as a journalist five years earlier, when exposed Willowbrook State School on Staten Island).

Covering the Harlem Blackout with Geraldo, Craig quickly became motivated to pursue his own career in journalism. After his internship with ABC and graduation from Kutztown, he participated in the Community Film Workshop. As the Community Film Workshop was a program in which veteran journalists taught aspiring journalists from minority backgrounds, he certainly met the qualifications for the program. Being the youngest child of Cruz "Allen" and Lillian Friedman Rivera (as well as the youngest sibling of Geraldo Rivera), he was a son of an interethnic and interfaith couple (as the Boricua Allen Rivera broke his promise to convert from Roman Catholicism to Orthodox Judaism for the Ashkenazi Jewish Lillian Friedman), and he was (as his siblings were) raised in Lillian Friedman Rivera's faith (which his maternal grandparents, Michael Isaac and Tillie Krivel Friedman, stipulated as a condition to reverse the estrangement which their sitting shiva caused.). He was also part of the only Boricua-Jewish family in West Babylon when he was raised there, and his Kutztown internship with ABC News and his brother gave him participatory advantages within the program.

After he completed his participation, he was hired for his first paid job within the journalistic profession. Being hired by ABC News for its "20/20" show, he worked from 1978-1986 as an investigative reporter for "20/20". In 1986, he was promoted by ABC to an on-air position for 'Inside Edition', which was his first on-air position within the journalistic profession.

After the September 11th attacks, he moved with Geraldo from NBC News and Rivera Live (1993) to Fox News Channel, where he would serve as one of Geraldo's producers and cover the War on Terror (including the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq). Also serving as Senior Producer and Correspondent for Fox News, he primarily produced a segment called "Craig Investigates", which aired on the weekly program "Geraldo at Large".

Again moving with Geraldo, he left Fox News Channel when his brother retired from there in 2023. At present, he remains his brother's producer and manages his website.

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Craig Rivera

Producer

Self