Anderson Cooper anchors Anderson Cooper 360°, an unconventional,
wide-ranging news program airing on CNN/U.S. weekdays. Cooper, who joined CNN
in December 2001, served as CNN's weekend anchor before moving to prime time in
March 2003 following the war in Iraq and then to a two-hour, late evening
timeslot in November 2005 following Hurricane Katrina.
Since the launch of Anderson Cooper 360°, Cooper has covered nearly all of
the major news events around the world. Often reporting from the scene, he
spent more than a month along the U.S. Gulf Coast covering the devastation
caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and has returned more than 20 times to
follow the reconstruction progress. Cooper has reported multiple times from
Afghanistan and Iraq, including anchored coverage in both countries of the
fifth and sixth anniversaries of the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraqi elections.
Cooper also covered the bombings in London and the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict
in 2006, anchored much of CNN's live coverage of the funeral of Pope John Paul
II in the Vatican City in 2005 and traveled to Sri Lanka to cover the tsunami
in 2004.
During most of 2007, Cooper traveled around the world for Planet in Peril, a
sweeping four-hour documentary in high definition about issues threatening the
planet and its inhabitants. Scheduled for air in October 2007, Planet in Peril
takes viewers to places around the world where environmental change is not a
theory or a forecast, but a crisis happening in real time.
In 2007, Cooper moderated the groundbreaking CNN/YouTube debates for
Democratic presidential candidates from The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., and
for Republican presidential candidates in St. Petersburg, Fla.
In addition to reporting for CNN, Cooper also provides reports for CBS's 60
Minutes. Dispatches from the Edge, Cooper's memoirs about covering the South
Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and other news events, recently topped the New
York Times Bestsellers List and other bestseller charts.
Before joining CNN, Cooper was an ABC News correspondent and host of the
network's reality program, The Mole. Cooper anchored ABC's live, interactive
news and interview program, World News Now, as well as providing reports for
World News Tonight, 20/20 and 20/20 Downtown. Previously, he was a New
York-based correspondent for ABC News, reporting primarily for World News
Saturday/Sunday.
Cooper joined ABC from Channel One News, where he served as chief
international correspondent. During that time, he reported and produced stories
from Bosnia, Iran, Israel, Russia, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa and Vietnam.
He also reported national stories that were broadcast over the Channel One News
school television network and seen in more than 12,000 classrooms nationwide.
Cooper and Anderson Cooper 360° have won several awards, most recently three
Emmy awards in 2006 for reports about famine in Niger, Charity Hospital in New
Orleans and black market infertility. Cooper has also earned a National
Headliners Award for his tsunami coverage, an Emmy Award for his contribution
to ABC's coverage of Princess Diana's funeral; a Silver Plaque from the Chicago
International Film Festival for his report from Sarajevo on the Bosnian civil
war; a Bronze Telly for his coverage of famine in Somalia; a Bronze Award from
the National Educational Film and Video Festival for a report on political
Islam; and a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding TV Journalism for his 20/20
Downtown report on high school athlete Corey Johnson.
Cooper graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a bachelor of arts degree
in political science. He also studied Vietnamese at the University of Hanoi.
Cooper is based in New York City.
