Erin Burnett Looks So Different In Throwback Pic From Early CNN Days

CNN anchor Erin Burnett has been through quite a lot since joining the network in 2011. However, despite her occasional controversial moments, including the time she was publicly banned from entering Russia in 2023, Burnett's show "Erin Burnett OutFront" has been a staple of CNN's lineup for well over a decade. Not only that, but in that time, Burnett has come to be recognized as one of the main faces of the network. She's also one of several CNN stars who have drastically transformed their appearance, as evidenced by how different she looks in a throwback photo from her early days reporting from the network's studio.

The post in which Burnett shared the photo in question is actually kind of a throwback in and of itself. Back in 2018, the anchor took to Instagram to re-share a photo she had originally posted in 2013, just two years after she left CNBC for CNN. In the photo, a younger-looking Burnett can be seen smirking and holding a doll of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the re-post caption, Burnett called the then-five-year-old photo "timely." Given the timing of the July 2018 post, she was likely referring to the summit that took place between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump in Finland's capital of Helsinki that month.

Around that time, Burnett also harshly criticized Trump for siding with Putin over his own intelligence agencies regarding alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. She also expressed great skepticism that Trump's attempts to walk back his remarks were genuine (per CNN).

While Burnett is a staple at CNN these days, it's interesting to note that landing the job in the first place was a huge milestone for her, both professionally and personally. In a 2021 interview with Adweek's TVNewser blog, Burnett recalled some of her earliest encounters with the news network's on-screen personalities during family trips to Washington, D.C. while she was growing up in Mardela Springs, Maryland.

Fast-forward several years, and Burnett had already carved out a career for herself in the world of broadcast journalism before CNN came calling. However, she confessed that even when she was at CNBC, she still saw CNN as the big one, so to speak. "I remember when I was in New York, I would run the lower loop by Central Park South. There's a big time and date showing on the side of one of the buildings, and it was 'CNN' for many years," she recalled. "I remember looking up there and thinking about the power of the CNN brand. I always had this feeling about it, that it was this vaunted, special place," Burnett continued, adding that she couldn't believe it when she finally got the chance to work there. Still, being the new person provided its own challenges at first. "Now, I feel like it's family," she shared. And in 2024, Burnett once again took to Instagram to commemorate 13 years since the premiere of "OutFront" in 2011.