Late last month, as bombs were traded between Israel and Iran, I was struck by how well CNN stalwart Anderson Cooper handled being in the midst of potential chaos. I couldn’t help but think that it showed the host at his absolute best. But that setting is wildly different from his usual job of anchoring Anderson Cooper 360 in the network’s primetime block.
Thinking about that juxtaposition — between being on a rooftop in Tel Aviv at 3 AM local time with alerts telling you that missiles were incoming in the next 10 minutes and sitting inside your comfortable studio — led me to watch a recent episode of Anderson Cooper 360 to get a feel for how a regular, run-of-the-mill evening looks for the longtime star.
For this exercise, I tried to find the most boring (sorry if that’s an offensive term) story for Cooper to cover during his primetime program. Because I wanted to see how two stories at the complete opposite ends of the spectrum were covered by Cooper.
So, while digging through his episodes for the week, I found a conversation about a former administrator for USAID discussing the repercussions of slashing funding for the agency. Not exactly the world’s most riveting topic, frankly. Especially when you’re a week removed from being in the Middle East rushing away from a vulnerable position as bombs were headed your way.
I watched the conversation with Samantha Power and immediately felt a sense of information over opinion from Cooper. He didn’t necessarily give a stance on how he felt about the cuts being made at USAID as much as he shared data from studies that showed millions of deaths globally could be attributed to the cuts should they continue to be enacted. Now, one could deduce how the longtime CNN host truly felt about those cuts based on the information he shared and the network for which he works, but he didn’t expressly state it. He was still in “Big J Journalist” mode and simply sharing facts in advance of his conversation with Power.
Also, before getting to the discussion, Cooper did something that I think more cable news hosts could admit to: that the interview wasn’t live. It was pre-recorded. I think admitting this adds to your credibility — not detracts — due to the honesty. It would have been insanely easy to edit the interview to make it appear live, and viewers would have been none the wiser. But that admission adds to the honesty, in my view. I appreciated being told that it wasn’t live, despite nothing really being gained by that admission.
While I thought Anderson Cooper was at his best when the proverbial you know what hit the fan, I found him authoritative and understanding of the matters at hand from his studio during this “boring” topic. His first question to Power essentially hinged on getting Power to back up her stance — which was shared by the likes of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama — that the previous strategy from the organization was in the best interests of the United States.
A cynic could view that question as a thinly veiled “Why is President Trump wrong?” query. But I didn’t take it that way. The initial question is an important one because it lays out why in the world anyone should care what this former administrator has to say. If she agrees that the funding needs to be cut, we don’t need to hear from her. She agrees with the Trump administration. Cool. Next.
But, because she’s a dissenting voice, it’s important to hear right off the bat why she feels the way she does. So Cooper set her up perfectly to execute that.
As the discussion, and the episode as a whole, continued, I felt as if the show might be a bit too intellectual for me. Which, make no mistake about it, is a good thing. Lots of folks can sit down and do a “Everything stinks, I hate everything, and you should to” cable news show. We could use some more intellectualism in the cable news ecosystem.
There was a balance, of course, too. I didn’t get the sense that Cooper stepped into the studio and thought, “Let’s do a show that goes over the tops of the heads of the overwhelming majority of Americans.”
But some of the boring topics were…boring. I don’t know what that says about Cooper’s ability. Does that make him a good host because he doesn’t overanalyze or sensationalize the news? You could certainly make that case. Could you also argue that there not being a high entertainment value and rather a rationale, nuanced discussion about the day’s top stories as reason why CNN has slumped behind Fox News and MSNBC in the primetime ratings? Certainly.
However, I don’t know that Anderson Cooper fits the bill of a modern — for lack of a better term — primetime cable news host. He isn’t bombastic. He isn’t a partisan firebrand. He’s just Anderson. And there is a place for that in cable news. At least, for his, CNN, and the country’s sake, I hope there is.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
