University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: November 16, 2006

By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer

Truthful and honest reporting should take precedence over the use of slanted viewpoints to attract viewers to cable television news, CNN host Anderson Cooper told an Alumni Arena audience on Saturday during the second lecture of the 2006-07 Distinguished Speakers Series.

COOPER

Cooper, host of CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360°," said the proliferation of partisan pundits in the media reflects a reluctance in the United States to engage in a genuine swapping of perspectives and ideas.

"I don't feel we're trying to hear other viewpoints or walk in other people's shoes," he said. "People seem to expect their news to have a slant these days. Perhaps it's the fault of the media, but I don't think it's something any one of us should accept. I don't think there should be a Republican truth and a Democratic truth. There should only be truth and accuracy."

Although he noted that the transfer of power in Congress last week seems to suggest the ship of state has begun to tilt once again toward the middle, Cooper said partisan pressures aren't the only challenge facing those who cover politics in the United States.

American politics seem much more filtered—the emotions less genuine—compared to other stories he has reported on overseas, Cooper said, citing as an example the intense orchestration of the 2004 presidential debate in which the two parties negotiated a 32-page "memorandum of understanding" that stipulated details about the debate, including the height of the candidates' podiums and temperature of the room.

"I find politicians tough to talk to because I often feel they're not speaking from their heart," said Cooper. "Politicians are practiced at giving responses to questions instead of answers.

"A response," he said, "is not the same as an answer."

He pointed out that most of the tough questions about the failure of the government to respond in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina remain unanswered more than a year after the storm devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

During his coverage of the disaster in 2005, Cooper said he heard America's leaders discussing the unpredictable nature of the storm and congratulating one another on their remarkable relief effort. But, he said, reality did not match the rhetoric.

"It was just sort of stunning to hear," he said. "Katrina was unprecedented, but it certainly wasn't unpredicted."

Discussing his recent return to the Gulf Coast, Cooper said significant areas remain unchanged. He said piles of debris and ruined homes present a "time capsule" of incompetence and failure. He also talked about the absence of memorials honoring the people who died—people, he said, such as a 91-year-old woman he met last year in the New Orleans Convention Center, a site that has since been refurbished to eliminate all signs of the disaster 15 months ago. The greatest fear of the city's residents is being forgotten, he said.

"To me, my job when I'm in the field is to at least remark upon and notice the passing of a person," he said.

Cooper has been no stranger to death and disaster over the course of 15 years spent reporting from such war-torn regions as Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Darfur.

"One of the frustrating things of being a reporter, and one of the challenges of it, is trying to capture all that you see in that small little camera lens," he said.

His experience in hotspots across the globe taught him a lot about the human condition, he added.

"I may have gone to college at Yale, but I was educated in Sarajevo and Somalia and South Africa and Rwanda," said Cooper. The "dark parts of the human heart" are open for all to see in conflict and war, he said. "I realized we're all capable of terrible acts of brutality and barbarism, but we're also capable of great acts of compassion and dignity."

He added the danger posed to journalists in Iraq has turned the war there into one of the hardest to report on today. In Sarajevo, Cooper said he could still talk to people in cafés and their homes, despite the mortars landing around the city and snipers shooting people in the street.

"In Iraq, you can't do any of that," he said. "You can't stand in one spot more than 15 minutes. If people find out you're in the neighborhood, then it becomes a security threat."

In addition, Cooper discussed ongoing conflicts in Africa to which the media has paid little attention. He pointed to the genocide in Darfur and the 4 million people who have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1998.

"To me, the only answer is you've got to keep trying," said Cooper, who estimated he has spent altogether a year of his life reporting in Africa. "You've got to keep doing stories on it, you've got to keep focusing on it and you have to keep it as part of the conversation."

In the end, Cooper said, the public holds the power to demand serious stories on serious issues from the media because their choices as consumers control the medium. A true commitment to important issues lies in the hands of both the people and the reporters, he said.