‘If no one was going to give me an opportunity, I’d have to create my own’

Anderson Cooper shares his life story

Jacqueline Peraza | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

CNN anchor and world-renowned journalist Anderson Cooper was the second guest of the 17th season of the Distinguished Speaker Series last Saturday night.

Director of Student Activities Cindy Mata-Vasquez introduced Cooper, who attended the event from his CNN office in New York City, to the Zoom attendees.

Communication Associate Professor, former journalist and Pulse Magazine adviser Aje-Ori Agbese moderated the event.

Richard Givens and Ernesto Peña interpreted the event.

Agbese began the event by thanking Cooper for agreeing to be the guest speaker.

“It’s a real honor to be here,” Cooper said. “Thank you so much. I’m so thankful that everyone who is joining us is, wow, spending your Saturday night with us, with me and Dr. Agbese. So, thank you.”

He said living in New York amid the COVID-19 pandemic has proved how “tough” the city is and changed his workplace routine.

“Even on a regular day, there’s really no one in the office anymore,” Cooper said. “It’s a very small number of people who have been coming in and … we wear masks at the office, and when I broadcast my show I’m in a tiny closet-sized studio with no crew around with a robotic camera. … I’m a little starved for human interaction, so it’s nice to actually talk to you.”

He jokingly compared working at his office to waking up in a spacecraft seen in movies.

“I had a feeling of being on … those sci-fi movies when somebody is on a spaceship and they wake up from hypersleep but the rest of the crew has continued to sleep or, you know, gotten killed in their sleep, and you’re just wandering around the spacecraft in your underwear,” Cooper said.

Agbese began a series of journalism-related questions by asking him what it was like to cover the 2020 presidential election.

“Any election is an incredibly exciting thing and is a remarkable thing to cover,” Cooper said. “Normally, I’m much more in the field covering these things, going to conventions and going to rallies, and things like that. Obviously, it’s very different this time around. But, look … the Trump Administration’s time in office has been unlike any other president in modern-day history… for better or worse … depending on how one sees it, this was an election like none of us have ever seen.”

Asked how he ensures putting out the truth and reliable information as a journalist, he replied, “It’s been a really challenging four years. The President of the United States has said that I and my colleagues are the enemies of the state, which is alarming to have the president … say that about you and your coworkers. I would argue that that is not the case, and it’s a very dangerous thing to say. For all the attacks that the president has done against CNN, our attitude is to keep our heads down and just do our jobs. Our job is reporting, and the answer to attacks from anybody is more reporting.

“It’s a particularly challenging time when the American people are so polarized that people see events with completely different perspectives and believe what they want to believe. … At a certain point you have to stand up for what is true and what is false. For me, that is the sole purpose of my job.”

Cooper studied political science in college and explained what drew him to journalism.

“As a kid I was really interested in military history and I was interested in joining the military,” he said. “At the time, you couldn’t join the military if you were gay and I realized that wasn’t going to be a profession I could do. I was interested in … government service. I interned at the CIA for two summers in college. I thought about joining the state department. Then, I realized all the stuff that I really loved, which was going to some far away place and immersing myself in a different culture and learning about people and talking to people, I realized I could do that as a reporter.”

Cooper spoke about the struggles of not knowing how he would make a living, his brother’s death and taking a gap year after college.

“There’s a traditional route, which is trying to get a [reporting] job at a local station somewhere and work your way up through different markets, or getting a job at a broadcast network as an entry level person, and that’s what I tried to do, and I couldn’t get entry-level jobs,” he said. “So, I decided if no one was going to give me a chance, I would have to take a chance. And if no one was going to give me an opportunity, I’d have to create my own.”

Cooper said he had a friend create a fake press pass, borrowed a camera and with the money he had saved up, started covering wars across the world by himself for the next three years.

“I thought to myself, if I went to places that were really dangerous, that other people weren’t going to, I could probably find some incredible stories and … personally, I was really interested [to see] how people survive,” he said.

Asked what it was about survival that interested Cooper so much, he responded growing up with loss and realizing at an early age that anything can happen.

“My dad died when I was 10, and my brother, as I said, died by suicide when he was 23 and I was 21. …  So loss is something that I had grown up with,” he said. “If you lose a parent early on, you realize terrible things can happen and no amount of hugs or lullabies can make it right. And, also, for me, a fear about: ‘Would I survive?’ I didn’t know how I would survive in the world. … But I decided, at age 10, after my dad died, that I want to prepare myself for whatever disaster is gonna come next.”

Cooper also spoke about covering natural disasters, showing compassion as a reporter and offered aspiring journalists some tips.

“I think it’s important, as a reporter, to be fair and try to be objective, and I don’t always succeed in that and when I don’t, I try to point it out and … apologize,” he said. “But I do think it’s important to be a human being when reporting. Television is an incredible instrument. This camera is so small, a thin piece of glass, and it transmits so much. It’s not just an image that it’s transmitting. It’s transmitting, you know, ‘Are you real? Are you honest?’ It tells who you are.”

Asked what was next for him, Cooper replied, “I really don’t know. I’ve never been good at thinking long term and … in this business, it’s changing so fast. … I mean, I love what I do but … I have a son now, and my son is the focus of my life, and he gives me joy that I never even knew was imaginable.”

He jokingly added that he may enroll at UTRGV in the future.

Before the Q&A session, Cooper ended his talk by offering a few words of encouragement to the UTRGV Fall Class of 2020.

“We all have to do things that we don’t want to do at times,” he said. “We all take jobs that we’re not really that excited about. It’s not what gets our hearts racing, or what we really want to do, and I’ve certainly done that a bunch of times throughout my life. But sometimes, it’s as important to learn what you don’t want to do as it is to learn what you do want to do. … Wherever you end up, you have to make yourself indispensable. You have to be the person in the office, or wherever you’re working, that people cannot imagine you not being there.”

Terry Crews will be the next Distinguished Speaker Series guest on Feb. 8. For more information, visit https://www.utrgv.edu/studentactivities/distinguished-speaker-series/index.htm.