1st in the Ratings...

...18 Million People Saw His Bare Chest!


Anderson Cooper: 'Too much yelling on cable news'

CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper is riding about as high as you can in the TV news business these days. His cable news ratings for his nightly Anderson Cooper 360 are tops in his time period for November, and he’s winning them with serious, fact-based journalism.

And then, there’s his part-time job as a correspondent for the top-rated CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes where he’s doing first-rate newsmagazine journalism that ranges from a report on rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to a recent Michael Phelps profile that drew an audience of more than 18 million viewers.

Thursday at 9 on CNN, the 41-year-old newsman will be seen in yet another role as investigative reporter traveling to Cameroon, Costa Rica and Rwanda to cover stories of humans, animals and eco-systems under stress on Planet in Peril. From tracking animals suspected of carrying the kind of deadly pandemic viruses that can spread to humans, to swimming with great white sharks, the 41-year-old newsman looks to be putting himself in some peril for the reports.

In an interview with Z on TV, Cooper talked Tuesday about the Planet special, his "old school" news values, his distaste for partisanship in cable TV news and his much-commented swim with Phelps during the 60 Minutes piece.

Q. You just won the November ratings period in the key demographic of viewers 25 to 54 by sticking with traditional news values -- even as your competition moves further to the right and the left. Can you talk about how you see yourself and the CNN show journalistically?

A. I think there’s too much yelling on cable news, and I don’t want to add to it. These are scary times. These are dangerous times. A lot of people are hurting, and I’m not interested in adding to the cacophony of chatter on cable news.

I am interested in presenting information and looking at facts and arming viewers with the information they need to make decisions about their own lives and what’s happening in the country. And I’m not interested in taking sides and having a liberal newscast or a conservative newscast. I just think there’s too much partisanship as there is. We’re about looking at facts and holding people accountable no matter what their political persuasion.

Q. That formula seems to be working well for you and CNN these days.

A. I think in many ways I’m sort of old school. We’re interested at CNN in having a news program, in reporting and doing journalism and doing it the best we can. That’s one of the things I love about CNN: They’re still investing money in sending people out to the front lines. We did a week of shows from the Democratic Republic of the Congo on rape and the civil war there. We did a week of shows in Niger on the child malnutrition crisis. This is something no other network invests the time or resources to do, but CNN continues to do in a very challenging environment. And I’m proud to be part of it.

Q. Can you talk a little about what some viewers might see as risks you took -- going into the jungles of Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with hunters exposed to dangerous animal-borne viruses -- and the swimming with white sharks off South Africa? Do you go looking for this kind of stuff? How do your bosses feel about it?

A. I’ve been interested in viruses for a long time. The idea that the ripple effect of a food crisis can lead to hunters going deeper into forest regions where there may be deadly viruses lurking intrigues me.

It is often just a case of me saying to CNN, "Look, I really want to go and do this." And there have been a couple of times where there have been outbreaks of obscure viruses that I was pushing to go to, and CNN was somewhat reluctant to let me go. But in this case, it fit into what we were doing, so they said okay.

On the shark thing, I had planned on diving in a cage. But when we got there, we found this guy who swims with great white sharks, and he was confident enough in my diving to take me out. I actually called back to CNN that night, and they were great. They usually leave it up to my discretion in the field as what is safe not only for myself – but I’m certainly not going to do anything that will endanger anybody else.

Q. When you call back to CNN, how far up the line do your requests to do such things go?

A. It usually goes up to Jon Klein (CNN president). He usually weighs in pretty fast. I’ve got his number on speed dial for situations like that.

Q. This is your second Planet in Peril. Can you talk about the goals for the franchise?

A. It’s something we’re very committed to doing. Often with pieces about the environment, they seem to be theoretical pieces – people talking about things that may happen many years from now. We really want on Planet in Peril to focus on what is happening now -- what you can actually see and experience now. So last year and particularly this year, we wanted to go to the front lines where things are happening, where there’s conflict over natural resources, and see the ripple effects of that conflict, which are only going to increase over the coming years.

Q. Speaking of swimming earlier, you recently received quite a bit of attention -- and some flak from bloggers like me -- about getting in the pool for a "race" with Michael Phelps during your recent 60 Minutes piece on him. What's your reaction to that kind of reaction?

A. On a celebrity profile — and I’ve done a few of them now for 60 Minutes — we usually try to come up with something that is different or something you haven’t seen a celebrity do before. With someone like Michael Phelps who has been interviewed extensively and done tons of television appearances, it's difficult to come up with something new or something you haven’t seen.

It was interesting to me that so many people paid attention to me swimming against him -- which was literally in a 13 minutes piece, it was maybe a minute. It’s interesting to me of literally all the comments, that was the thing that everyone mentioned. I was just on David Letterman last night and that was the thing he mentioned as well. It was the first thing he mentioned and he actually showed the race. It’s interesting to me to do a piece and see what people comment on that way...

Posted by David Zurawik on December 9, 2008 -- 4:03 PM