CNN Interviewer Stuck In Atlanta Traffic For Three Hours Goes After City’s Mayor

CNN interviewer Carol Costello was more than a little angry when she sat down to interview Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed on Wednesday, but the television veteran had a good excuse.

After a winter storm caught the city unprepared and left motorists stranded in their cars for hours, Reed has become a target of criticism. Costello herself was one of those people caught in gridlock, saying it took her more than three hours and two separate attempts to drive the two miles from CNN’s Atlanta headquarters back to her home.

“You know how angry people are at you?” the CNN interviewer asked Reed.

After warning Costello twice to “be fair,” Reed said it was easy for her to criticize him “from your anchor seat.”

“No!” Costello shouted back. “I was out stuck in the traffic. I was one of those people.”

Costello said on her first attempt to leave her office on midday Tuesday she wasn’t even able to get out of the parking lot. After an hour she gave up and went back to work. Later that evening she made another attempt to get home, arriving there two hours later.

Carol Costello has made headlines before. In 2012 she shut down an interview with an anti-gay activist, and in May of last year became the subject of the story herself three teenagers attacker her in Atlanta, stealing her cell phone.

Costello said she was trying to be tough with Reed but also hold him accountable.

“I was amazed that he kept passing the buck — pointing fingers everywhere but at himself,” the CNN interviewer said. “I think that’s where my frustration came from. I wanted him to say, ‘I’m angry and frustrated at the response and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.’ He didn’t say that. Being a citizen of Atlanta and caught in the mess, I know what it felt like… I wanted to get answers from the man who was supposed to be protecting me from that and I didn’t get that.”