Georgie Anne Geyer (born April 2, 1935) is an American journalist and columnist for the Universal Press Syndicate. Her columns focus on foreign affairs issues and appear in approximately 120 newspapers in North and South America. She is the author of several books, including a biography of Fidel Castro.
Geyer was born in Chicago. She graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 1956, where she was a member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority. She attended the University of Vienna on a Fulbright Scholarship. She speaks Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Russian.
Her first job was with the Chicago Southtown Economist. From 1959 to 1974, Geyer was a reporter for the now-defunct Chicago Daily News, where she worked from society reporting to the news desk and eventually foreign correspondent. After leaving the paper, she began her syndicated column.
In 1973, she was the first Western reporter to interview Saddam Hussein, then Vice President of Iraq. She also interviewed Yasser Arafat, Anwar Sadat, King Hussein of Jordan, Muammar al-Gaddafi, and the Ayatollah Khomeini. She reported on rebels in the Dominican Republic, was held by authorities in Angola for her reporting during civil war, and was threatened with death by the White Hand death squads in Guatemala.
Geyer has more than 21 honorary degrees, including three from Northwestern alone.
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In a October 1996 letter published in the Chicago Tribune, now Judge Ramon Ocasio III criticized Geyer for anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic rhetoric in her Op-ed "The anti-Columbus Day march."[1]
In a May 10, 2002 column "Now Isn't the Time for Bush League Moves," Geyer reported, without specific attribution of the source, that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon claimed to "control America." The quote was investigated by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. They contacted the editor of the Chicago Tribune, the newspaper which ran the column. He told CAMERA that Geyer used a press release from the Islamic Association for Palestine as her source.
IAP claimed in turn that Ariel Sharon made the claim in a broadcast on an Israeli radio station, Kol Yisrael. Kol Yisrael denied that any such broadcast occurred, and the statement could not be substantiated by any independent news source. CAMERA concluded that it was fabricated. The Chicago Tribune issued a correction, stating that the quote had been used in Palestinian press but was otherwise unconfirmed.[2]