There are so many young journalists, producers and reporters who are decades apart from the roots of local TV News. Some have zero interest in the history of their own industry. Some just take for granted people like Geraldo Rivera, who they see as nothing more than a big mouth on the Fox News Channel. They have no concept of what came before them.

It’s so important to see where we’ve been if we ever want to know where we are going in TV news.  That’s why I’m posting one of the most spell-binding news reports every aired. In 1972, Geraldo exposed the neglect and horrific conditions of the mentally impaired people locked away in a New York institution known as Willowbrook State School. It’s name is anything but a school. Geraldo earned a Peabody for his reporting, and rightly so. Here is a compilation of what is perhaps his greatest work as a news reporter at WABC-TV in New York City.