AC, The Speaker

Journalist emphasizes factual storytelling

Emily Rios
Issue date: 3/4/09 Section: Life

He's traveled the world covering wars and disasters. He has interviewed political leaders and celebrities and won three Emmys. He his one of our country's best-known journalists.

But CNN anchor Anderson Cooper's main focus is telling stories of ordinary people who are dealing with extraordinary circumstances.

That was the message he delivered on Feb. 17 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium as a contributor to the venue's Distinguished Speaker Series.

Born on June 3, 1967 to writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and designer and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, the anchor had no formal journalistic training, but he graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a bachelor of arts degree in political science.

"I had studied communism, but when the Berlin Wall fell I was totally screwed," he said.

Cooper was unsure of the direction he wanted his life to take, but he did fall in love with the differences he saw in Africa after he traveled there.

After failing to get an entry level job at ABC, Cooper was hired as a fact checker for Channel One, a news provider aimed at teens.

Cooper created his own opportunities-he had a friend make him a fake press pass-and began traveling to war zones by himself to get into the news business.

"Until traveling to Somalia, I had never seen starvation or children die by me," he said " I was educated all over the world. Working in places where pain and loss are palpable helped me realize that I should cover all types of stories."

Covering politics can be frustrating, Cooper said. While he respects journalists whose political shows lean toward certain sides, he said that he feels it is important that his show be balanced, though people should remain open."As a journalist I believe in facts, not opinions," he said. "It is important that we do not close ourselves off from the viewpoints of others."

Cooper emphasized that people must know where their information is coming from. He commented that Hurricane Katrina is the best example of why reporting still matters.

He told the story of Ethel Freeman, a 91-year-old wheelchair-bound resident of New Orleans who along with her son, left her home to seek help at the Convention Center. With no medical care available, Freeman died. Her son, Herbert Freeman, stayed with her body as long as he could before he was evacuated. He wrote his personal information on a piece of paper, stuck it in his mother's pocket, ,and covered her body with a blanket.

In the aftermath of the hurricane countless media outlets used a photograph of Freeman's body.

It took her son seven months to track down Freeman's body at a morgue in Louisiana.

At the close of his address, Cooper was asked how he dealt with being a first-hand witness to the pain of others without letting it cloud his judgment as a reporter.

"I grew up a WASP, so I was bred to suppress my emotions," Cooper joked. "But it is important to be moved by things and be affected, but you learn to control it."

Above everything, Cooper continuously emphasized the importance he sees in covering the stories of people whose names you might never remember.

His advice to young people was to find their voice in their writing and to strive to out-work everyone else.

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