Aaron Brown, the former CNN and ABC anchor renowned for his coverage of 9/11 and founding host of ABC’s “World News Now,” died Sunday at the age of 76, his family told CNN. No cause of death was given.
Brown’s career at ABC also included serving as the weekend anchor of “World News Tonight” before he joined CNN in 2001. His first day on-air was 9/11, and Brown won the Edward R. Murrow award for his coverage of the terrorist attacks from around Manhattan, including the World Trade Center site. He reported live for 17 hours.
From 2001 to 2005, Brown anchored CNN’s “NewsNight.” He left the network in 2005, and in 2008 — after his contract was up — he returned to TV as the host of PBS’ “Wide Angle.”
Brown spoke candidly about reporting live on the 9/11 attacks for a CNN special on what it was like to anchor during the attacks in 2020, which you can watch below.
“From the moment the first tower fell, there was a clock ticking,” he remembered. “Because if the first tower fell, the second one was going to fall too. In that moment, there were men, mostly firemen and policemen, who were running into that building that was collapsing knowing that they were never going to come out. When that building fell, I understood better than at any other point in my life, before or since, what the word hero meant. It’s not that we didn’t try to tell that story great, it’s that the story itself is too great to tell.”
