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Anderson Cooper
Cooper at Wolfson Children's Hospital, 2007-10-20
Born
Anderson Hays Cooper

(1967-06-03) June 3, 1967 (age 57)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation(s)Broadcast journalist, Author
Notable credit(s)World News Now co-anchor (1999–2000)
American Morning anchor (2002)
Anderson Cooper 360° anchor (2003–Present)
Websitehttp://www.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/cooper.anderson.html

Anderson Hays Cooper (born June 3, 1967) is an Emmy Award winning American journalist, author, television personality and former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.[1] 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 studio; however, Cooper often broadcasts live on location for breaking news stories.

Background

Cooper was born on June 3 1967 in New York City, the younger son of the writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and the artist, designer, writer, and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II of the prominent Vanderbilt Family of New York. His ancestry is primarily of English, Irish, Welsh, Spanish and Dutch descent.

Cooper's media experience began early. As a baby, he was photographed by Diane Arbus for Harper's Bazaar.[2][3] 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.[4] From age 10 to 13, Cooper modeled with Ford Models for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Macy's.[5]

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." He has said, in retrospect, "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 to be "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."[5]

After graduating from the Dalton 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."[5][6]

Cooper's older brother, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, committed suicide on July 22, 1988, at age 23, by jumping from the 15th-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?[5]

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, 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.[5]

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.[7] Independent news media have reported that he is gay,[8][9][10] and in May 2007, Out magazine ranked him second among "The Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America."[11] He does discuss some aspects of his personal life including his desire to have a family and children.[6]

He also said to Oprah Winfrey while promoting his book that he had suffered from dyslexia as a child.[12] He confirmed his "mild dyslexia" on The Tonight Show to Jay Leno, who is also dyslexic, on August 1, 2007.

On March 19, 2008, Cooper mentioned on his blog that he had minor surgery under his left eye to remove a "small spot of skin cancer".[13]

Education

Cooper graduated from The Dalton School in 1985. He continued his education at Yale University, where he resided in Trumbull College, 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,[1] having been a "news junkie" "since I was in utero".[14]

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 was unsuccessful. Finding it hard to get his foot in the door of on-air reporting, Cooper decided to enlist the help of a friend in making a fake press pass. Cooper then entered Burma on his own and met with students fighting the Burmese government.[14] He was ultimately able to sell his home-made news segments to the small news agency of 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, Cooper 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".[6] 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."[6]

ABC

Anderson Cooper at Qualcomm Stadium during the California wildfires of October 2007.

In 1995, Cooper became a correspondent for ABC News, eventually rising to the position of co-anchor of World News Now on September 21, 1999. 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.[14]

Cooper was also 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.[14]" 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.[14]

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.

Cooper marching on January 11, 2007 in New Orleans against violence.

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.”[5] 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."[15]

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."[16] 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."[17] 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.[18] 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.[19]

In October 2007, Cooper began hosting the documentary, Planet in Peril, with Sanjay Gupta and Jeff Corwin on CNN.

Writings

File:Dispatches from the Edge.jpg
Anderson Cooper, on jacket of his book Dispatches from the Edge.
  • Cooper is also a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in many other outlets, including Details magazine.[20]
  • 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 titled Dispatches from the Edge and was released May 23 2006. Some of Cooper's proceeds are being donated to charity. The book topped the New York Times bestseller list on June 18, 2006.[21]

Awards

  • 2005 National Headliners Award for his tsunami coverage[22]
  • 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[23]
  • 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[24]

References

  1. ^ a b Bercovici, Jeff (2006-09-06). "Anderson Cooper's CIA secret". Radar. Retrieved 2008-06-13. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) Cite error: The named reference "radaronline" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  2. ^ Green, Tyler. "MODERN ART NOTES: Name That Baby". ArtsJournal. Retrieved 2007-06-30.
  3. ^ Patricia Bosworth, "Diane Arbus: A Biography", NY: W.W. Norton, 1984
  4. ^ The New York Times, 17 September 1970, page 95.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Van Meter, Jonathan, "Unanchored," New York, 19 September 2005 (Retrieved on 27 September 2006).
  6. ^ a b c d "Anderson Cooper's Private War" by Po Bronson; Men's Journal, March 2007
  7. ^ "Gloria Vanderbilt's Many Loves: Heiress Discusses The Romances And Tragedies Of Her Life". CBS News Sunday Morning. 2005-07-31. Retrieved 2007-06-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  8. ^ Musto, Michael (2005-03-17). "Did I Ruin My Chances With Anderson Cooper?". The Village Voice. Retrieved 2007-06-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. ^ Moylan, Brian (2003-11-07). "Presidential debate for youth includes gay issues". Washington Blade. Retrieved 2007-06-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. ^ Usborne, David (2007-04-08). "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". The Independent. Retrieved 2007-06-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  11. ^ "The Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America". Out. May 2007. Retrieved 2007-10-16.
  12. ^ "Books That Made a Difference to Anderson Cooper". O, The Oprah Magazine. July 2005. Retrieved 2007-06-30.
  13. ^ {{cite web | url= http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/page/2/ | title= Anderson Cooper 360: 2008 March << - Blogs from CNN.com | accessdate= 2008-03-20 | author= Anderson Cooper | date= [[March 19] | year= [2008] | quote= "On a personal note, I’ve been off for the last couple of days. I had minor surgery on Monday. A small spot of skin cancer was removed from under my left eye." }}
  14. ^ a b c d e Hirschman, David S. (2006-05-11). "So what do you do, Anderson Cooper?". Mediabistro.com. Retrieved 2007-06-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  15. ^ "Blown Away by Katrina". Broadcasting & Cable. 2005-12-12. Retrieved 2007-06-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  16. ^ 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).
  17. ^ Carter, Bill, "CNN ousts evening anchor and embraces rising star", The New York Times, 3 November 2005 (Retrieved 27 September 2006).
  18. ^ Carter, Bill, "CNN ousts Aaron Brown and gives slot to Anderson Cooper", The New York Times, 2 November 2005 (Retrieved 27 September 2006).
  19. ^ "Exclusive: Anderson Cooper Signs New Multiyear Deal with CNN," Broadcasting & Cable, January 19 2007
  20. ^ Patrick Phillips (2007-03-01). "Anderson Cooper: 'I Didn't Go to Anchor School'". I Want Media. Retrieved 2007-01-03. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  21. ^ "Side Dish". New York Daily News. Retrieved 2007-01-03. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  22. ^ "2005 National Headliner Award Winners: Broadcast television networks, cable networks, and syndicators". NationalHeadlinerAwards.com.
  23. ^ "27th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards". EmmyOnline.org. 2006-09-25. Retrieved 2007-06-30. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  24. ^
    • Got the 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 Oldest Geezer in the book award. He cried at the fact he was the youngest oldest geezer in the book.
    12th Annual GLAAD Media Awards ~ GLAAD.org April 16 2001.
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