[5][8] After his discharge he enrolled at Iowa State University, graduating in 1974 with dual degrees: one in journalism and mass communication, the other in political science.

During his studies at Iowa State, he was employed as a part time photographer and reporter at the KRNT radio and television station in Des Moines.

[3][9][10] He then joined the Associated Press, serving in Kentucky, Japan and South Africa before being assigned to Lebanon as chief Middle Eastern correspondent for next two and a half years beginning in 1983.

[3][5][9] On March 16, 1985, Anderson had just finished a tennis game when he was abducted from the street in Beirut, placed in the trunk of a car, and taken to a secret location where he was imprisoned.

He was the longest-held of the Western hostages captured by Hezbollah in an effort to drive U.S. military forces from Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War.

[12][13][a] During his captivity, numerous persons fiercely advocated for his release including his older sister Peggy Say, who rallied support from Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II, Yasir Arafat, and Ronald Reagan, professional journalists Dan Rather and Kevin Cooney, who was a close friend from Anderson's days in Iowa, his fellow colleagues at the Associated Press and numerous other journalists who had covered war zones.

[32][33] In 2013, he acted as Honorary Chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-profit that supports press freedom around the globe.

[5][36][37] Anderson also created the Father Lawrence Jenco Foundation with a $100,000 endowment to honor and support people who do charitable and community service projects in Appalachia.

[5][43] He met his first wife, Mihoko "Mickey" Anderson, while he was a Marine stationed with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service in Japan.

[5][44] After 1982, he became engaged to Madeleine Bassil, a Lebanese native from a Maronite Christian family; they had one daughter, Sulome Anderson, born in 1985,[44][45][46] three months after he was taken hostage.

[50][51][52] In an interview in the spring 1995 newsletter of the School of Journalism Alumni Association, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, by Will Norton Jr., Anderson is quoted: Is there going to be peace in the world?

That great process of history, of thousands of years of an increase in a dignity of the individual, seems to have been halted for a good period of time by the growth of totalitarian societies, and those are breaking up now.