'Anderson Hays Cooper' (born
June 3,
1967) is an
Emmy Award winning
American journalist,
author, and television personality. He currently works as the primary
anchor of the
CNN news show ''
Anderson Cooper 360°''. The program is normally broadcast live from a New York City based studio; however, Cooper often broadcasts live, on location for breaking news stories.
Background
Anderson Cooper was born on
June 3,
1967 in New York City, as the younger son of the writer
Wyatt Emory Cooper and the artist, designer, writer, and heiress
Gloria Vanderbilt. He is of mostly
English,
Irish,
Dutch and
Spanish ancestry.
Cooper's media experience began early. As a baby, he was photographed by
Diane Arbus for ''
Harper's Bazaar''.
[ MODERN ART NOTES: Name That Baby ][Patricia Bosworth, "Diane Arbus: A Biography", NY: W.W. Norton, 1984] At the age of three, Cooper was a guest on ''
The Tonight Show'' on
September 17,
1970, when he appeared with his mother,
Gloria Vanderbilt.
[''The New York Times'', 17 September 1970, page 95.] From age 10 to 13, Cooper modeled with
Ford Models for
Ralph Lauren,
Calvin Klein and
Macy's.
1
Cooper's father suffered a series of heart attacks, and died
January 5 1978 while undergoing open-heart surgery at the age of 50. This is said to have affected the young Cooper "enormously." In retrospect, he has said, "I think I’m a lot like my father in several ways," including "that we look a lot alike and that we have a similar sense of humor and a love of storytelling." Cooper considers his father's book ''Families'' as "sort of a guide on...how he would have wanted me to live my life and the choices he would have wanted me to make. And so I feel very connected to him."
[1]
After graduating from high school at age 17, Cooper went to
southern Africa in a "13-ton British Army truck" during which time he contracted
malaria and required hospitalization in
Kenya. Describing the experience, Cooper wrote "Africa was a place to forget and be forgotten in."
Cooper's older brother,
Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, committed suicide on
July 22,
1988, at age 23, by jumping from the 14th-floor terrace of Vanderbilt's
New York City penthouse apartment. Gloria Vanderbilt later wrote about her son's death in the book ''A Mother's Story,'' in which she expresses her belief that the suicide was caused by a
psychotic episode induced by an
allergy to the anti-
asthma prescription drug Proventil. Carter's suicide is apparently what sparked Anderson to become a journalist:
"Loss is a theme that I think a lot about, and it’s something in my work that I dwell on. I think when you experience any kind of loss, especially the kind I did, you have questions about survival: Why do some people thrive in situations that others can’t tolerate? Would I be able to survive and get on in the world on my own?"
Cooper also has two older half-brothers, Leopold Stanislaus Stokowski (born
1950) and Christopher Stokowski (born
1952), from Gloria Vanderbilt's ten-year marriage to the conductor
Leopold Stokowski.
Cooper has never married, and has actively avoided discussing his relationships or even his
sexual orientation, citing a desire to protect his neutrality as a journalist:
"I understand why people might be interested. But I just don’t talk about my personal life. It’s a decision I made a long time ago, before I ever even knew anyone would be interested in my personal life. The whole thing about being a reporter is that you're supposed to be an observer and to be able to adapt with any group you’re in, and I don’t want to do anything that threatens that."
His public reticence contrasts deliberately with his mother's life spent in the spotlight of
tabloid journalists and her publication of memoirs explicitly detailing her affairs with celebrities.
[ Gloria Vanderbilt's Many Loves: Heiress Discusses The Romances And Tragedies Of Her Life ] Independent news media have reported that he is gay,
[ Did I Ruin My Chances With Anderson Cooper? ][ Presidential debate for youth includes gay issues ][ Pink List: Out in the USA: Film star Jodie Foster and TV presenter Anderson Cooper have made unsought appearances on a US version of the 'IoS' Pink List ] and in May 2007, Out Magazine ranked him second among "The Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America."
[ The Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America ] He does discuss some aspects of his personal life including his desire to have a family and children.
3
He also said to
Oprah Winfrey while promoting his book that he had suffered from
dyslexia as a child.
[ Books That Made a Difference to Anderson Cooper ] He confirmed his "mild dyslexia" on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, who is also dyslexic, on August 1, 2007.
Education
Cooper graduated from
The Dalton School in
1984. He continued his education at
Yale University, where he resided in
Trumbull College and studied both
Political Science and
International Relations and graduated in
1989.
During college, he spent two summers as an intern at the
Central Intelligence Agency. Although he technically has no formal journalistic education, he opted to pursue a career in journalism rather than stay with the agency after school,
[ Anderson Cooper's CIA secret ] having been a "news junkie" "since I was ''in utero''".
[2]
After his first correspondence work in very early
1990s, he took a break from reporting and lived in
Vietnam for a year, during which time he studied the
Vietnamese language at the
University of Hanoi. Speaking of his experiences in Vietnam on
C-SPAN's ''Students & Leaders'', he said he has since forgotten how to speak the language.
Television work
Channel One
After Cooper graduated from Yale University, he tried to gain entry-level employment with
ABC answering telephones, but ended up taking a job as fact-checker and reporter for the much smaller
Channel One, which produces a youth-oriented news program that is broadcast to many junior high and high schools in the
United States.
After reporting from Burma, Cooper lived in Vietnam for a year and then returned to filming stories from a variety of war-torn regions around the globe, including
Somalia,
Bosnia and
Rwanda. Haunted by his brother's suicide, Anderson explains, "The only thing I really knew is that I was hurting and needed to go someplace where the pain outside matched the pain I was feeling inside." Cooper describes himself as having become "fascinated with conflict" during this dangerous period of his life.
On assignment for several years, Cooper had slowly become desensitized to the violence he was witnessing around him; the horrors of the
Rwandan Genocide became trivial: "I would see a dozen bodies and think, you know, It's a dozen, it's not so bad".
[3] One particular incident however snapped him out of it:
On the side of the road [Cooper] came across five bodies that had been in the sun for several days. The skin of a woman's hand was peeling off like a glove. Revealing macabre fascination, Cooper whipped out his disposable camera and took a closeup photograph for his personal album. As he did, someone took a photo of him. Later that person showed Cooper the photo, saying, "You need to take a look at what you were doing." "And that's when I realized I've got to stop, [...] I've got to report on some state fairs or a beauty pageant or something, to just, like, remind myself of some perspective."3
ABC
In 1995, Cooper became a correspondent for
ABC News, eventually rising to the position of co-anchor of ''
World News Now''. In 2000 he switched career paths, taking a job as the host of ABC's reality show ''
The Mole'':
"My last year at ABC, I was working overnights anchoring this newscast then during the day at ''20/20''. So I was sleeping in two- or four-hour shifts, and I was really tired and wanted a change. I wanted to clear my head and get out of news a little bit, and I was interested in reality TV—and it ''was'' interesting."
Cooper also was a fill in co-host for
Regis Philbin for the TV
talk show ''
Live with Regis and Kelly'' in 2007 when Philbin underwent triple bypass heart surgery. He recapped the show for viewers of ''Anderson Cooper 360'', often poking fun at the way he laughed.
CNN
He left ''
The Mole'' after its second season to return to broadcast news in 2001, now at CNN: "Two seasons was enough, and
9/11 happened, and I thought I needed to be getting back to news.
" His first position at CNN was to anchor alongside
Paula Zahn on ''
American Morning''. In 2002 he became CNN's weekend prime time anchor. Since 2002, he has hosted CNN's
New Year's Eve special from
Times Square. On
September 8 2003 he was made anchor of ''
Anderson Cooper 360°'', a fast-paced weeknight news program.
Describing his
philosophy as an
anchor, Cooper has said:
"I think the notion of traditional anchor is fading away, the all-knowing, all-seeing person who speaks from on high. I don't think the audience really buys that anymore. As a viewer, I know I don't buy it. I think you have to be yourself, and you have to be real and you have to admit what you don't know, and talk about what you do know, and talk about what you don't know as long as you say you don't know it. I tend to relate more to people on television who are just themselves, for good or for bad, than I do to someone who I believe is putting on some sort of persona. The anchorman on ''The Simpsons'' is a reasonable facsimile of some anchors who have that problem."
Anderson Cooper, on jacket of his book ''Dispatches from the Edge.''
In
January 2005 he was sent to
Sri Lanka to cover the
tsunami damage. That same month, he also went to
Baghdad,
Iraq to cover the elections. In
February and
March 2005, he covered the
Cedar Revolution in
Beirut,
Lebanon. In early
April 2005 he reported from
Rome, covering the
death of Pope John Paul II, and from London, covering the
royal wedding of Prince Charles and
Camilla Parker Bowles.
In
July 2005 he covered
Hurricane Dennis from
Pensacola, yielding one of the most memorable bits of footage from that particular storm. He and
John Zarella were standing outside a Ramada during the worst of the storm when a large metal sign blew down. During CNN coverage of the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina, he confronted Sen.
Mary Landrieu, Sen.
Trent Lott, and the Rev.
Jesse Jackson about their perception of the government response. As Cooper later said in an interview with ''
New York'' magazine, “Yeah, I would prefer not to be emotional and I would prefer not to get upset, but it’s hard not to when you’re surrounded by brave people who are suffering and in need.”
1 As ''Broadcasting & Cable'' magazine noted, "In its aftermath, Hurricane Katrina served to usher in a new breed of emo-journalism, skyrocketing CNN's Anderson Cooper to superstardom as CNN's golden boy and a darling of the media circles because of his impassioned coverage of the storm."
[ Blown Away by Katrina ]
In
August 2005, he covered the
Niger famine from
Maradi.
In
September 2005 the format of CNN's ''
NewsNight'' was changed from 60 to 120 minutes to cover the unusually violent
hurricane season. To help distribute some of the increased workload, Cooper was temporarily added as co-anchor to
Aaron Brown. This arrangement was reported to have been made permanent the same month by the president of CNN's U.S. operations,
Jonathan Klein, who has called Cooper "the anchorperson of the future."
[4]
Following the addition of Cooper, the ratings for ''NewsNight'' increased significantly; Klein remarked that "[Cooper's] name has been on the tip of everyone's tongue."
[5] To further capitalize on this, Klein announced a major programming shakeup on
November 2 2005. Cooper's ''360°'' program would be expanded to 2 hours and shifted into the 10 p.m. ET slot formerly held by ''NewsNight'', with the third hour of
Wolf Blitzer's ''
The Situation Room'' filling in Cooper's former 7 p.m. ET slot. With "no options" left for him to host shows,
Aaron Brown left CNN, ostensibly after having "mutually agreed" with Jonathan Klein on the matter.
[6] In early
2007, Cooper signed a multi-year deal with CNN, which would allow him to continue as a contributor to ''60 Minutes'' as well as doubling his salary from $2 million annually to a reported $4 million.
[7]
CBS
In September 2006, Cooper became a correspondent on the CBS show
60 Minutes.
His first major interview was on
April 22,
2007 where he interviewed rapper
Cam'ron about the
"Stop Snitching" campaign. During the interview, Cooper asked Cam'ron whether he would tell the police if he lived next to a serial killer and knew that person was killing people. Cam'ron replied, "No, I wouldn't call and tell on them but I'd probably move." Cam'ron later apologized for his comments.
Other work
★ Cooper is also a
freelance writer whose articles have appeared in many other outlets, including ''
Details'' magazine.
[ Anderson Cooper: 'I Didn't Go to Anchor School' Patrick Phillips ]
★ In October 2005 it was announced that he signed a US $1 million
contract to write a
memoir for
HarperCollins detailing his "life as a journalist and human being in Sri Lanka, Africa, Iraq and Louisiana/Mississippi" over the previous year. It is entitled ''Dispatches from the Edge'' and was released
May 23 2006. Some of Cooper's proceeds are being donated to charity. In addition, the book topped the New York Times bestseller list on
June 18,
2006.
[ Side Dish ]
Awards
★ 2005 National Headliners Award for his
tsunami coverage;
[ 2005 National Headliner Award Winners: Broadcast television networks, cable networks, and syndicators ]
★ An Emmy Award for his contribution to ABC's coverage of
Princess Diana's funeral and another in
2006 for ''Outstanding Live Coverage of a Breaking News Story - Long Form'' for his report on the famine in Niger.
[ 27th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards ]
★ Silver Plaque from the Chicago International Film Festival for his report from
Sarajevo on the
Bosnian civil war;
★ Bronze Telly for his coverage of famine in
Somalia;
★ Bronze Award from the National Educational Film and Video Festival for a report on
political Islam;
★ 2001
GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding TV "Journalism" for "High School Hero," his ''
20/20 Downtown'' report on high school athlete Corey Johnson.
[8]
References
1. Van Meter, Jonathan, "Unanchored," ''New York'', 19 September 2005 (Retrieved on 27 September 2006).
2. So what do you do, Anderson Cooper?
3. "Anderson Cooper's Private War" by Po Bronson; ''Men's Journal'', March 2007
4. Jensen, Elizabeth, "An anchor who reports disaster news with a heart on his sleeve", ''The New York Times'', 12 September 2005 (Retrieved 27 September 2006).
5. Carter, Bill, "CNN ousts evening anchor and embraces rising star", ''The New York Times'', 3 November 2005 (Retrieved 27 September 2006).
6. Carter, Bill, "CNN ousts Aaron Brown and gives slot to Anderson Cooper", ''The New York Times'', 2 November 2005 (Retrieved 27 September 2006).
7. "Exclusive: Anderson Cooper Signs New Multiyear Deal with CNN," ''Broadcasting & Cable'', January 19 2007
8. 12th Annual GLAAD Media Awards ~ GLAAD.org April 16 2001.
External links
Official sites
★
Anderson Cooper 360°
★
Anderson Cooper 360° Blog
★
CNN: Anchors & Reporters: Anderson Cooper (profile)
News and media
★
August 16 2005:
"My brother's suicide" from ''CNN''
★
September 29 2005:
"CNN programs Cooper boost" from ''Variety''
★
October 12 2005:
"Anderson Cooper Memoir Goes to HarperCollins in $1 Million Deal" from ''The Book Standard''
★
May 31 2006:
"Anderson Cooper Almost Comes Out On Top" with sales information for his book, from ''The Book Standard''
Profiles
★
Anderson Cooper on
About.com
★
★
Anderson Cooper on the
Notable Names Database
★
Q&A with Anderson Cooper on CNN's Planet in Peril
★ Cspan
"Students and Leaders"
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