Jeanne Moos


Jeanne Moos is an American national news correspondent for CNN. She is based at the network's studios in Manhattan.

Biography

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Moos originally wanted to pursue a career in print journalism, but while attending the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, she decided to go into the television business instead. In 1976, she landed her first major job in television at WPTZ in Plattsburgh, New York, as the station's first female correspondent. During her tenure at WPTZ, she covered local and national stories, including the 1980 winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York.
In 1981 she joined CNN as a reporter. It was there that she covered stories ranging from political corruption to the United Nations during the 1991 Gulf War.
In the 1990s, Moos began to report on unusual and off-beat soft news stories, which is her current trademark. In 1995, she began a series of reports called "Making The MOOSt Of It." Today Moos continues to file reports for CNN in a segment called "Moost Unusual," seen during The Situation Room and during Showbiz Tonight on CNN Headline News. These stories tend to focus on subjects related to popular culture and make use of man-on-the-street style interviews, shots of tabloid magazine headlines, and clips garnered from videos on YouTube. They also frequently take viewers behind the scenes, showing Moos placing prank calls from her office or cracking jokes with other employees in CNN's Manhattan studios.

Controversy

In April 2014, Moos was forced to apologize following CNN's airing of a segment titled "Man in thong: Eyes up here, Duchess!", which was deemed "insensitive" and "racist" by viewers. In the roughly two-minute video, Moos mocked New Zealand Maori culture including traditional dance, costume, a greeting ceremony, and the haka, which she described as "a cross between a Chippendales lap dance and the mating dance of an emu."