Hurricanes are dangerous for everyone, even the TV personalities who report from the middle of the heavy rain and wind. CNN's Anderson Cooper learned that firsthand during his coverage of Hurricane Milton.
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00:00Hurricanes are dangerous for everyone, even the TV personalities who report from the middle
00:05of the heavy rain and wind. CNN's Anderson Cooper learned that firsthand during his coverage
00:10of Hurricane Milton.
00:11Milton made landfall on Florida's west coast as a Category 3 storm the night of October
00:169, 2024, bringing with it heavy rain, winds of up to 120 miles per hour, and even tornadoes.
00:23It ripped the roof of Tropicana Field, where the Tampa Bay Rays play baseball, to shreds
00:28and left an estimated 3 million people without power, according to USA Today.
00:32The hurricane was quite simply massive when it hit, and even the highest-ranking officials
00:36couldn't understate its destructive power.
00:39It's still expected to be one of the most and worst destructive hurricanes to hit Florida
00:44in over a century.
00:46Even with all that danger and mandatory orders to evacuate, people still remained on the
00:50Florida coast of the Gulf of Mexico to brave the storm surge. That included TV reporters
00:55who did what they do when a massive hurricane hits — report from the middle of the tempest.
01:00Among those was CNN's Anderson Cooper, who described the force of the storm while standing
01:05on a boardwalk in Bradenton, Florida, just north of Sarasota, where the storm's center
01:09made landfall. As he reported on the conditions by the Manatee River, a piece of debris flew
01:14up and smashed him in the face.
01:16The water now is really starting to pour over. If you look at the graph — whoa! Okay, that
01:22wasn't good.
01:23As a professional, Cooper kept on reporting for over a minute more as he continued to
01:27be pelted with rain, but thankfully no other stray pieces of debris. He seemed uninjured.
01:32Even so, some viewers didn't think it was very responsible for anyone, including the
01:36anchor of Anderson Cooper 360, to be out in that.
01:39When an account on Ex, formerly Twitter, posted footage of Cooper taking the piece of debris
01:43to the face, quite a few commenters said it just wasn't a good idea for him to be out
01:47there.
01:48One wrote,
01:49While nobody is asking for Anderson Cooper to stand outside in the rain and wind and
01:53report on a hurricane we all know about, we have YouTube, man. We know what it looks like.
01:57The original poster replied, though, that someone has to shoot those YouTube videos
02:01after all. Another commented,
02:02I don't understand why they send reporters out in this when they tell everyone else to
02:06evacuate.
02:07Another posted,
02:08Unnecessary. Reporters getting blown around in storms has become cliché. It's dangerous.
02:13We get it.
02:14It's true that there is a longstanding tradition of TV reporters standing in the midst of raging
02:18hurricanes to report from the scene. Arguably, Dan Rather made his name as a national figure
02:23with his reporting on Hurricane Carla hitting Texas in 1961.
02:27In 2023, the Poynter Institute took on the question of why reporters feel the need to
02:31send dispatches directly from within major storms. Longtime journalist Al Tompkins explained,
02:36referring to a Weather Channel veteran of live storm coverage,
02:39Let me tell you that live coverage saves lives. The communities that are suffering most desperately
02:44need journalists to document their needs. Help follows coverage, and I can say for sure
02:48that when Jim Cantore is on the air documenting the devastation in your town, emergency crews
02:53and federal aid will get there faster than if you suffer and nobody notices.
02:58So is potentially getting smacked in the face with debris worth the tradeoff? They report.
03:02You decide.