Anderson Cooper Research Paper

Anderson Cooper was born in 1967 to writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt, of the Cornelius Vanderbilt line. He was raised in New York City and was enrolled in the prestigious Dalton School during his teenage years. Though privileged, his early was marked by tragedy, with his father dying when Cooper was only 10 years old and his only brother committing suicide. These events, however, are what pushed him toward a career in journalism. He would go on to attend Yale University, graduating in 1989 with a degree in political science before pursuing a journalism career (“Anderson Cooper”).
Cooper started his career as a fact checker for Channel One, a program orientated at high school students. Growing restless, he struck out on his own, taking a video camera and traveling to war torn region in Africa and Southeast Asia. His reports gained the attention of ABC and in 1995 he became a war correspondent for the network. Later he would move to anchor positions on CNN before finally hosting his own news program, Anderson Cooper 360°, in 2003 (“Anderson Cooper”).
His reports are personal, as he often gets emotionally involved in the stories he is covering. Indeed, Cooper’s personality always shines through in his reports, displaying a conspicuous empathy that has contributed to his public esteem. A criticism of this style is, of course, the eternal journalistic question of what role a journalist plays in society. Should they just be a source of information, or are they allowed to take a stance? Though his personality-fueled style offers an engaging form of storytelling, when a topic demands a more strict relation of information to the public, a slight bias is inescapably