Anderson Cooper in Morristown: ‘Fake news,’ the front lines, and the Eye Roll

Anderson Cooper at MPAC, Sept. 16, 2017. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Anderson Cooper at MPAC, Sept. 16, 2017. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
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CNN anchor Anderson Cooper has raced into hurricanes, rushed to war zones, and seen enough horrors for a coroner’s convention, all in pursuit of a story.

So he bristles when President Trump attacks reporters as enemies of the people who churn out “fake news.”

“It’s obviously personally hurtful. It’s upsetting. It’s false…. I have friends who have died in the line of duty reporting,” Cooper told a big crowd at Morristown’s Mayo Performing Arts Center on Saturday night.

For 90 lively minutes, which included questions from moderator Patrick Healy of the New York Times and from audience members who paid up to $150 per ticket, Cooper shared tales from the front lines.

The journey spanned from his days as a freelancer with a fake press pass and borrowed camera in Burma, to a close call with an angry mob during the Egyptian revolution, to his (in)famous Eye Roll at an emissary of a White House that “repeatedly says things which are not true.”

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, left, and NYT reporter Anderson Cooper crossed paths in Afghanistan, and again in Morristown. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, left, and NYT reporter Anderson Cooper crossed paths in Afghanistan, and again in Morristown, Sept. 16, 2017. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

Trump’s broadsides at the media are for the benefit of his political base, and can be rebuffed with due diligence, the anchorman asserted.

“The answer to being called ‘fake news’ is journalism. And the answer to being called an ‘enemy of the people’ is more journalism. And the answer to being ridiculed and being called ‘the failing New York Times’ is even more journalism,” said Cooper, 50.

“And I think the key is just don’t complain about it, don’t whine about it. Put your head down and just move forward and do journalism. Just report.”

While covering Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he said, he reminded himself that “it’s not about you, it’s about the people that you’re covering.”

Yet he became the news earlier this year, when his “eye roll” during an interview with Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway went viral on social media.

“I want to be respectful to anyone I interview and I regret rolling my eyes,” Cooper said. “It was unconscious, I didn’t know I was doing it.”

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He said the President sometimes leaves Conway and other advisers in the dark, creating situations where interviewers know more than they do. Cooper related an interview where CNN had “ironclad” sourcing refuting Conway, who insisted she was correct and demanded to know who would be held accountable.

There was no reciprocity from Conway when she subsequently was proven wrong, said Cooper, who also is a correspondent for 60 Minutes.

Every administration lies to some degree, he said.

“Unfortunately, this White House repeatedly says things which are not true. And they say it from the podium of the White House, the President says it on his Twitter account, and there is never any go-back where they admit ‘We were wrong,'” he said.

Cooper said it’s imperative for news outlets to promptly correct their mistakes–he noted a CNN retraction that led three staffers to resign–and for them to police their biases. He shuns social invitations from political figures to avoid conflicts, he said, adding he’d rather stay home and watch Narcos.

Trump tweet CNN NYT Fake News

“I don’t want to be friends with any of these people,” said Cooper, who landed in Trump’s cross-hairs when he was tapped to co-moderate the second Trump-Clinton debate last year.

“I’m not saying that to be obnoxious, and I bet they’re not really dying to be friends with me. But it’s not my job to be friends with them…My job is to interview them and try to ask interesting and at times challenging questions, and I find it’s easier if I don’t really know them.”

SPEAKING THE ‘LANGUAGE OF LOSS’

Cooper’s taste for adventure was hatched on a high school stint in Africa. After graduating from Yale, he worked as a fact-checker for Channel One, a small organization that broadcasts to high schools and junior high schools.

Freelancing looked like his best shot at cracking into network TV.

“I just decided to start going to wars. I know, very sensible! My mom was obviously thrilled by the idea,” said Cooper, whose mother is Gloria Vanderbilt.

Anderson Cooper at MPAC, Sept. 16, 2017. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Security has become a greater concern for reporters in the field during th Trump era, Anderson Cooper told listeners at MPAC, Sept. 16, 2017. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

Cooper crossed illegally into Burma (now Myanmar) to cover student protests against the government, and soon found himself in war-torn Somalia and Sarajevo, with a yearlong study break in Vietnam.

He sought sad places, he eventually realized, because of personal sadness. When Cooper was a college senior, his older brother committed suicide by jumping from a 14th story penthouse terrace while his mother watched.

“In many ways it was my own grief that led me to seek out others who were grieving as well. I wanted to go places where the language of loss was spoken. Grief is something people don’t really talk about here,” he said. “I wanted to learn other people’s stories so I could figure out my own story.”  

Cooper related grim scenes from famines and floods, wars and earthquakes. Bearing witness is a tricky balancing act for reporters, he said.

“One minute you’re experiencing joy and triumph, and the next minute you’re in the depths of despair. You can’t allow yourself as a correspondent to become immune to the sadness of what you’re seeing. If you do that, you really have no business being out in the field.”

DARKNESS AND LIGHT

What buoys him, he said, are selfless acts that show how individuals can make a difference.

“In war and disasters, you expect to find darkness. But you also find light. You expect to see horror, but you discover humanity as well.”

He described Sri Lanka tsunami victims risking their own lives to grab others rushing past them in the flood waters, and a young man who bought a boat so he could rescue strangers threatened by Hurricane Harvey in Texas.

When an earthquake devastated Haiti, some of the world’s poorest people spent days clawing through the rubble for survivors.  Cooper was inspired by the brave survivor of a gang rape in the Congo, and by the defiant mother of a little girl massacred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. He said he felt privileged to tell their stories.

'I'M A COMPLETE WIMP' : 'I have a willingness to go places and then regret it when I'm there. I don't really think it through,' Anderson Cooper told an MPAC crowd, Sept. 16, 2017. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
‘I’M A COMPLETE WIMP!’ : ‘I have  a willingness to go places and then regret it when I’m there. I don’t really think it through,’ Anderson Cooper told an MPAC crowd, Sept. 16, 2017. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

Perspective also helps. Despite a drumbeat of terror and tragedy–new technology now broadcasts disasters in real time–the world is safer, with fewer wars and higher living standards for more people, than ever before, Cooper said.

A sense of humor is handy, too.

When an audience member inquired about his “Silver Fox” nickname, Cooper, whose hair started greying when he was 21, blamed the internet. “I guarantee it’s not on my business card,” he said, to laughter.

Cooper’s recent itinerary included Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and an interview with Hillary Clinton about her new book. Someone asked where he sleeps during his hectic travels.

“I only exist on television,” he shot back. “I live in a little box. Even when I’m not on, when The Price is Right is on, I’m sitting in the corner. If you use a magnifying glass you can see me, I’m very small.”

Friends have written him off, he continued, because he keeps “having to cancel everything.” (His Morristown appearance was postponed previously because of breaking news.)

It’s his own fault. Allergic to vacations, he bolted from some rare R & R at his place in Brazil to cover Harvey.

“I love what I do,” Cooper explained.

“Anybody who loves what they do, it doesn’t feel like work. It is a complete extension of who I am. I have no actual skills, so there is nothing else I can do. But I cannot imagine doing anything else.”

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