Anderson Cooper Is Wrong; Journalists Should Vote Too

“I hope that on Tuesday, Anderson Cooper—and all journalists wrestling with the same question—show up to the polls.”

With Election Day just upon us, record numbers of Americans—young and old—have been flocking to polling locations. It seems like nearly everyone is making their voice heard—that is, everyone except for presumably Anderson Cooper.

The CNN anchor made headlines during the 2016 election cycle when he admitted to Howard Stern that in most elections he doesn’t vote. When pressed on the rationale behind this decision, Cooper said: “I’ve gone back and forth on it. I don’t want to be influenced one way or the other. I don’t like feeling like I’ve taken a stand. I think it’s something you actively need to fight against [as a reporter].” This interview may have happened two years ago, but I’m certain that many other journalists experience similar thoughts come each election day.

I won’t be taking the “voting is a civic duty angle” for this piece. While that may very well be the case, it does little to convince someone who is considering sitting an election out. After all, when it comes to completing most other duties, you can nearly immediately see an effect or understand the impact that it will have on the long term. With politics that isn’t always the case; sometimes the effects of an election take years to materialize. In this debate, it is thus necessary to take a more generous angle to actually convince the dejected journalists that may be among us, as opposed to berating them with the same rote line they’ve heard since elementary school.

Asking whether a reporter should vote calls into question the power of bias, something that all of us have. The fact that Anderson Cooper said what he said shows that he’s cognizant of that, but I don’t think anybody needs to do extensive research on his background to realize that he has his political leanings. That’s not a knock against him in any way, as anybody who’s politically engaged can easily think of biased reporters all across the political spectrum—Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson immediately come to mind for the right. Look no further than the partisan and loaded words and phrases that they use.