Rivera to Leave CNBC and Go to War for Fox

Geraldo Rivera is walking away from his CNBC talk show to get his hands dirty, becoming a war correspondent for Fox News Channel.

Rivera’s last day at CNBC, where he hosts the nightly “Rivera Live,” will be Nov. 16, and on Nov. 19 he will head to the Afghanistan area, where he has previously covered drug wars. He had asked CNBC to send him, but the network wanted him to stay as an anchor, he said.

The move reunites Rivera, whose war experience ranges from the Middle East to Guatemala and Bosnia, with Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, who hired Rivera when he ran CNBC and who has more recently built a Fox stable of similarly outspoken personalities. Rivera said his new four-year deal calls for him to be a war correspondent, but what he will do after the story moves from Afghanistan isn’t yet clear. He said he sees his role as similar to what he did at ABC’s “20/20,” for which he was an investigative correspondent.

The often crusading journalist said patriotism in part compelled him, at age 58, to give up a studio job for fieldwork, which he has done occasionally in recent years. “I feel very fortunate, at this stage of my career and life, to be able to start again,” he said. “I’m feeling more patriotic and more serious. They attacked my hometown; they killed 15 parents in my kids’ school. I take this very personally.

“After Sept. 11, all of our priorities shifted,” said Rivera. “I’m a native New Yorker, I’ve got two small children and I started itching to be back in the thick of things and not chained to my desk as an anchor.”

Of the debate over whether it is good for reporters to take sides, he said: “I have made no bones about taking stories personally in the 33 years I’ve been in this business, and the only people who have ever complained to me are people in the business of media punditry. If people don’t like it, they don’t watch me, but I’ve obviously touched enough things in enough people to survive into my fourth decade.”

Rivera said he invoked an escape clause in his CNBC contract to take the Fox assignment. “NBC had its own needs, and I had my own emotional and professional need to be very near where history was being forged.” He said he has “no hard feelings” toward NBC.

CNBC President Pamela Thomas-Graham told staffers in a memo, “NBC understands Geraldo’s desire to be on the front lines and wishes him well.” CNBC will extend its business programming to fill the time slot, from 6 to 7 p.m., a move that had already been part of the network’s long-term strategy.