Aaron Brown, CNN Anchor Lauded For 9/11 Coverage, Dies At 76
Award-winning CNN anchor Aaron Brown has died at age 76.
Brown died Sunday, according to his family, the news network announced on Tuesday.
The broadcast journalist won widespread acclaim for his coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City ― his very first on-air appearance for CNN. Brown had not initially been slated to go on air but got pulled in amid the frenzy of breaking news, reporting from the roof of the network’s office in Manhattan, the network said in its obituary.
He won the Edward R. Murrow Award for his coverage of the terrorist attacks.
Brown worked in local TV news in Seattle for more than a decade before joining ABC News as a founding anchor for its late-night “World News Now,” which began airing in 1992. He joined CNN in July 2001, a few months before the on-air appearance that would become a major part of his legacy.
“When he was live on air, he just stopped and looked at it. And paused,” CNN’s John Vause said in Brown’s obituary, recalling his colleague’s reporting on 9/11. “And he shared this moment that everybody was thinking, ‘Good Lord. There are no words.’”
CNN host Michael Smerconish, writing for HuffPost’s contributor platform in 2007, said his memory of 9/11 would always be “entwined” with the image of Brown “standing on a New York rooftop in brilliant sunshine against a smoldering backdrop.”
Brown went on to cover multiple major news events for CNN, including the sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C., area in 2002 and the catastrophic loss of space shuttle Columbia in 2003. He anchored “NewsNight With Aaron Brown,” and his CNN obit credited him with serving a “pivotal role in shaping the network’s evening news format.”
But the network replaced Brown in 2005 with rising star Anderson Cooper, though Brown remained under CNN contract and thus was unable to work for any of its competitors until 2007. After the contract was up, he hosted the PBS documentary show “Wide Angle” until the series ended in 2009.
Following his tenure at CNN, Brown had some blunt criticisms of the evolution of cable news.
“I was very uncomfortable at the end with where they wanted it to go,” he said in 2008 of his final days at “NewsNight.” “I didn’t think the viewers were behind me when we did dumb television.”
In 2010, the news veteran lamented that CNN could be “the envy of any news organization in the world” but that it couldn’t “succeed in a world where people want news to be entertaining.”
Brown leaves behind his wife, Charlotte Raynor, and daughter, Gabby.
