CNN anchorman dodges bullets, delivers news

By By Neil Mulka

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Photo by Stephanie Farley

“To me, Rwanda was really an education,” Anderson Cooper said last night as he spoke to a crowd at the Kansas Union Ballroom. Cooper, who anchors CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” covers the genocide in Rwanda. Cooper has also covered the Columbia Space Shuttle explosion and the D.C.-area sniper story.

Sometimes you need a little help to get the job done.

For Anderson Cooper, CNN anchorman, that meant paying AK-47 wielding 15-year-olds for protection while covering famine in Somalia.

That tale, along with dodging bullets in South Africa and stealth maneuvering from a Baghdad airport to his hotel are just some of the reporting experiences Cooper told last night to an audience at the Kansas Ballroom in the Kansas Union.

The Iraqi tale was a surprise due to the images of victory after the war, said Angela Carlon, Shawnee junior.

“I was surprised that we didn’t have complete control,” Carlon said.

All of Cooper’s stories weren’t about guns and bullets.

He met a Sri Lankan boy who had thrown stones into the sea because the tsunami took away his brothers, sisters and friends.

He couldn’t express his pain in words.

It’s an image that stays with you, Cooper said.

Cooper is very inspiring, Hannah Love, Dodge City freshman, said.

“He has a great outlook,” Love said. “I was really impressed by the fact that he cries about his news stories.”

Besides answering questions about his travels, he fielded questions from the audience that ranged from his prematurely gray hair to the corporate influence on media.

Video

To hear Cooper speak on different issues, watch our video footage:

Finding a lot of angles to a story is something that Cooper is good at, Paul Crangle, Lincoln, Kan., junior, said, especially in his coverage of the Iraq war.

“He did a story about families back home,” Crangle said. “There was a story about people who lost their jobs when they came back.”

Cooper addressed balancing stories that held the public interest and ones that were under the radar.

His obligation is to find a way to tell those stories in a compelling manner, he said.

“When we fail is when we can’t figure out how to tell a compelling story that may not be on its face compelling,” he said.

— Edited by Lisa Coble-Krings

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