Aaron Brown, the longtime television anchor whose coverage during CNN’s live broadcast of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks became one of the most well-known records of the day, died Sunday in Washington, D.C. He was 76.
His family confirmed the death in a statement, which did not cite a cause.
Brown joined CNN in June 2001, and he was still training for his role on the morning of Sept. 11. He was not supposed to appear on the air for several more weeks, but when the attacks on the World Trade Center began he was rushed up the roof of CNN’s Manhattan headquarters to cover the events live.
His broadcasts have endured as one of the most memorable reports during the attacks, with Brown veering between clear-eyed reporting and horrified human emoting.
“Good lord,” Brown said at one point, turning from the camera to watch the fall of the south tower. “There are no words.”
Brown would go on to win an Edward R. Murrow Award, one of broadcast news’ most prestigious honors, for his work that day. Still, it would be years before he spoke openly about the experience of covering the tragedy, and he remained conflicted about his place in it.
“Sometimes I’m a little embarrassed, I suppose, at this notion that anything I did mattered,” he told NPR’s “All Things Considered” in 2011. “I think I just told a story.”
Aaron Brown was born in Minneapolis on Nov. 10, 1948, to Mort and Rose Brown. He briefly attended the University of Minnesota in 1966 before dropping out to join the U.S. Coast Guard Reserves.
He began his broadcasting career in radio, transitioning to television in Seattle, where he became a well-known news anchor across 15 years working in the city. He moved to New York in 1991 to join ABC News, where he was a founding anchor for its overnight program, “World News Now,” before joining CNN.
“Aaron got to do the work that he loved — and he felt lucky to do that work as part of a community of people who were dedicated to good journalism and who became good friends,” Brown’s wife, Charlotte Raynor, said in a statement Tuesday.
As his career progressed, Brown was widely considered to be a news anchor in the Peter Jennings mold, delivering fact-based reports in a medium that was increasingly being overtaken by debate and analysis. In addition to the Murrow award, Brown also collected three Emmy Awards.
“He was a tough guy to work for, but he could also be quite mentoring,” John Vause, a CNN anchor and correspondent who worked with Brown on Sept. 11, told the network Tuesday. “It was almost like doing your midterm finals, every time you were doing a live shot with Aaron.”
Brown left CNN in 2005, two years before his contract was set to expire, as the network was shifting from fact-based news programming to talk shows and analysis. He later spoke with bitterness of being forced to anchor four hours of running coverage of the high-profile murder trial of actor Robert Blake.
“It was totally ridiculous,” Brown told Variety after he was unmuzzled from his CNN contract in 2007. “It’s what people watch; I didn’t like doing it, and I don’t think people bought it from me.”
After leaving CNN, he was appointed the inaugural Walter Cronkite Professor of Journalism at the University of Arizona’s Cronkite School of Journalism, a post he held until 2014.
In addition to his wife, his survivors include a daughter, Gabby Brown, and two grandchildren.
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