CNN Anchor Anderson Cooper Honored With 2025 Goldsmith Career Award

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper was awarded the 2025 Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism at a ceremony hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy.

Cooper warned that the Trump administration was launching “highly effective” assaults against the free press and the legal system in a talk moderated by Nancy Gibbs, the director of the Shorenstein Center.

“I think this administration is pulling levers, and has a sense of what levers to pull, in ways that are so far very effective,” Cooper said. “A lot of the institutions that are deeply embedded in the bedrock of this country are actually more based on norms of behavior.”

Five other journalists and teams were honored for their reporting. The Shorenstein Center has organized the awards ceremony annually since 1991.

The Washington Post’s Opinions series “Who is Government?” won the award for explanatory reporting, Laura Beers and Adam J. Berinsky each earned prizes for their respective books, “Orwell’s Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century and Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It”, and Katey Rusch and Casey Smith were honored for their investigative series, “Right to Remain Secret,” exposing how California police agencies hid officer misconduct.

The awards ceremony took place in the shadow of the Trump Administration's recent efforts to crack down on news organizations — including a $10 billion November lawsuit against CBS’s “60 Minutes,” where Cooper works.

“I had not considered the various forms of assault that news organizations were under,” Cooper said. “The business of news, the corporate ownership of news, was never something I really paid attention to —it had no bearing on my job.”

Both Gibbs and the honorees acknowledged these threats in their comments.

“It would be tone deaf maybe for me to stand here celebrating the superb work of our honorees without addressing what has changed for the reporters who are trying to do the work that we depend on them to do,” Gibbs said.

“These past weeks of assault and battery on the very idea of public service have been harrowing to watch, much less to live,” she added.

But Cooper emphasized that President Trump’s attacks extended beyond the free press to the legal system. He cited the numerous law firms that have agreed to provide the Trump administration with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of pro bono legal services to avoid lawsuits.

“The law firms are not standing together in opposition,” Cooper said. “It’s just an extraordinary thing to witness. It’s never been done before.”

But Cooper also drew a line between the “unprecedented” actions of Trump and the overseas crises he’s reported, saying it was an “overstatement” to compare the current situation to a “civil war.”

“That is different than what we have here. I’ve seen societies fall apart,” Cooper said. “Nobody who’s seen them really talks about something casually like that.”

Cooper argued that reporters could best rebut the public’s lack of trust in journalism by doubling down on their work.

“I’m not sure there’s much to combat that except doing our jobs better,” Cooper said. “Just getting better at what we’re doing and not making mistakes.”

Cooper said he thought the industry needed more factual journalism rather than opinionated reporting — especially from an “overpaid, blow-dried anchor.”

“I really don’t care what some anchor thinks about something,” Cooper said. “And I include myself. I don’t even know why you’re all listening to me. I feel like a fraud.”

“I try not to have people arguing at each other on a cable news show,” he added. “It's a lot of heat, but it's not a lot of light.”

Cooper said the work done by the honorees of the Goldsmith Awards exemplified the type of journalism needed.

“I think it’s inspiring to see the folks whose work we saw today and just know there are people out there doing the work and doing it really incredibly well,” Cooper said. “I want to live in a world where that matters and where that ultimately effects change.”

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at elise.spenner@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @EliseSpenner.

—Staff writer Tanya J. Vidhun can be reached at tanya.vidhun@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @tanyavidhun.