Dangerous Reporting

Anderson Cooper Is Not Afraid To Get His Hands Dirty

By PopEater Staff Posted Mar 17th 2010 -- 11:20AM

>CNN journalist Anderson Cooper graces the cover of Outside Magazine's April "Adventure" issue and reveals that while covering the recent earthquake in Haiti, he couldn't sit back like some journalists. Instead, he dug into the rubble to start saving lives.

"To be in a place before relief workers are there: That presents some unique challenges. You suddenly find yourself in a situation where, you say, 'You're a doctor -- what do you do?' There are some journalism purists who say that you do nothing, that you just watch and report, and I certainly understand that," Cooper says. "But in the case of a little boy who got hit in the head with a cement block, no one was helping him. He couldn't get up ... Blood was pouring from his head. It was a split second decision to take him out of the situation. I think anyone would have done the same thing if they had the opportunity."

In the interview, he talks openly about the dangers of reporting, his stint in Haiti and the emotional toll of coming face-to-face with his biggest fears.

On reporting in dangerous locations: "I don't believe you should be ruled by fear in anything in life. I don't like anything that scares me. I prefer to face it head-on and get over it. Anyone who says they're not scared is a fool or a liar or both. I just don't want that fear in my stomach to be a part of my life, so I work to eliminate it."

On the risks taken by adrenaline junkies: "I have no interest in jumping out of an airplane or any of the things people do for thrills to push the limit and all that. To me, that seems foolish, there's no point. If people are suffering in a place, to me, it's not a question of whether I'm going to go or not. It's a question of how fast can I get there."

On his naivety during as a youth: "I can't believe some of the things I did. The idea of going to Somalia alone, not having a place to stay or security. I was 23 or 24. There was fighting between different clans in the city. I literally landed on the airstrip and had no idea about the town. A truckload of gunmen approached me, and I ended up hiring them as my gunmen, and we went around to these burial rounds where all these bodied were being dumped, and there were all these empty pits. I was thinking, they could just shoot me and put me in a pit and no one would ever know."