What Line?

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Anderson Cooper on Where to Draw 'The Line'

By Kevin Allocca on Aug 21, 2010 09:55 AM

• Men's Journal has a Q&A [see "Men's Journal" below] with CNN's Anderson Cooper this week and asks about the line between journalist and participant. "There is a line, and the more you've been in the field, the more you're aware of where the line is," he says. "If you're in a situation where you can help a little boy who's got a concussion or blood pouring from his head -- to me, that's not a huge journalistic issue. But you know in your gut when something is happening just for your cameras, and you remove your cameras from that situation." Cooper also says in the Q&A that South America, Equatorial Guinea, and the Congo are places he'd like to report from more.

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As he did after Katrina, CNN’s top disaster reporter isn’t just bearing witness; he’s standing up for the Gulf.

By Kevin Gray

Five years ago Anderson Cooper decamped to the Gulf of Mexico to become the voice of angry residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina. This summer he’s reprised that role while covering the oil spill there, using his prime-time CNN show to needle both the feds and BP execs. When the company’s chairman claimed that BP cares “about the small people,” Cooper opened his show with a list of residents left jobless from the gusher and decided: “This is a land of giants.” We reached Cooper by phone as he entered his sixth week on location.

Men’s Journal: You seem frustrated down there. What’s going on?
Anderson Cooper: A number of things. One is you’re dealing with a private company, BP, which doesn’t have a history of being transparent. Though they’ve promised transparency, they haven’t lived up to that promise by any definition of the word. They rarely inform the public about what’s going on — it’s like reading tea leaves trying to figure out what is actually happening. I’m just doing my job, which is trying to get the facts, and it’s a very difficult thing to do here given the many obstacles in the way. People are desperate for information, and I think it’s important to give voice to what people are going through here, as well as what is happening with the actual spill.

MJ: You’ve been in the Gulf for a while. Do you get story or compassion fatigue?
AC: Frankly, no. You’re around people in desperate situations, and so one’s own minor difficulties seem sort of meaningless.

MJ: I saw a video from Haiti earlier this year where you carry a bloody kid from a mob throwing rocks. Ever get involved like that before?
AC: No. I’ve been in plenty of situations where people were injured and being attacked around me, but you know, this was a weird situation where a child was not a combatant and was injured, couldn’t get up, was in the line of getting hurt even more because rocks are being thrown, large chunks of concrete, and all it required was for me to bend down and pick the kid up and run. So to me it was a no-brainer; it was very instinctual.

MJ: Where do you draw the line?
AC: There is a line, and the more you’ve been in the field, the more you’re aware of where the line is. I think that if you give a lift to somebody to get them to a feeding center or to a doctor, or if you come across somebody who’s been raped and they ask you to give them a lift to a hospital, I don’t think that’s a big deal — as long as you acknowledge what you’ve done. If you’re in a situation where you can help a little boy who’s got a concussion or blood pouring from his head — to me, that’s not a huge journalistic issue. But you know in your gut when something is happening just for your cameras, and you remove your cameras from that situation.

MJ: What kind of situation is it where people are doing things just for the camera?
AC: Riots. I was in a riot in Somalia where a woman was being beaten by a crowd — she was accused of being a prostitute, and she had grabbed a knife and was trying to defend herself, and the crowd had ripped off her blouse and were set on killing her. Suddenly the crowd turned on me, and I decided to withdraw from the situation. But anytime someone is very eager to be on camera, I’m generally wary of that.

MJ: Is there ever anything you want to show but can’t because it’s too gruesome?
AC: You see a lot of stuff, and it’s a judgment call. Do people need to see — or should they see, or do they want to see — a corpse that’s been eaten by dogs? During Haiti, I was at a place where a building had collapsed and crushed about 100 people. In one part there was nothing left of a person but some liquid and a piece of hair from their head. I had that in the story and then realized before it went to air that maybe that was something that was too extreme for some people, and I took it out. But I tend to believe people should see the reality of what’s going on and what other people are forced to deal with and live through.

MJ: Right after you graduated college, you made a fake press pass to get into Myanmar to cover student radicals taking on the ruling military junta. How did you not get yourself killed?
AC: It was the first combat zone I’d ever been in. Karen fighters smuggled me across the border in a truck, then in a dugout canoe. No one even checked my pass — I think they were just glad to have someone interested in documenting their struggle.

MJ: If you were ever in need of rescuing, what agency would you want rescuing you?
AC: It totally depends on where, and on the situation. I tend to want local knowledge, so that would call for local police. But at the same time I’ve been in situations where the local authority is not functional. In Haiti, I did not see any Haitian police officers around for days, so in a place like that I’d hope for some sort of international group. Certainly one of the lessons of Katrina is that, at least initially, you’re kind of on your own. It’s you, it’s your family, it’s your neighbors, and you need to be prepared to take care of yourself.

MJ: You seem to work nonstop. What’s your idea of a vacation?
AC: Most of the time when I do get away for vacations I get called back to work for something, but I was in Namibia over Christmas in one of the most remote areas, where there’s a nomadic ethnic group I stayed with called the Himba who live very much like they’ve lived for centuries. Basically twig huts and goats.

MJ: What other places are high on your bucket list?
AC: I haven’t really spent as much time in South America as I would like, but there’s always someplace still left to go. I’m interested in Equatorial Guinea, which is a desperately poor country. It has huge revenue from oil but a leader who is legendarily, how should we say, corrupt? It’s not the
sort of place that people typically would want to visit, but it’s a government that’s emblematic of traditional problems with kleptocracies. Congo is a real interest of mine. I’ve been going there since I was 17 — when it was still Zaire — and I’ve been back a lot since. I get bored really easily, and I tend to sort of keep moving. A week is enough vacation for me at any time.

MJ: You bought a decommissioned firehouse in New York City to live in. I’m guessing you haven’t spent much time there, but how’s the renovation going?
AC: Hasn’t started. But it’s a really cool space. I want to keep it as a firehouse and restore it as much as possible to its original condition.

MJ: So you’re keeping the pole?
AC: Yes, keeping the fire pole, definitely.

MJ: You swam with great white sharks on 60 Minutes. What was that about?
AC: I thought it would be interesting — and it’s not something you get to do every day. I was scared of sharks, and I don’t like there to be things that I’m scared of. I think you should jump headfirst into the things that scare you most. So getting into bloody water with great white sharks circling around was certainly high on that list of things that scared me. It was an extraordinary experience.

MJ: Have you tried conquering other fears that way?
AC: On a more ridiculous level, public speaking. Being on camera is easy for me, but speaking in front of several thousands of people, it’s a different skill set. Making speeches gave me a nervous pit in my stomach, so I forced myself to do it: I gave the commencement address at Tulane in front of 12,000 people. And it was fine.
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This article first appeared in the September 2010 issue of Men’s Journal.