Aaron Brown, Former ABC News and CNN Anchor, Dies at 76

Aaron Brown, the former ABC News and CNN anchor, has died. He was 76.

CNN on Tuesday said Brown died on Sunday, citing a statement from his family. No cause of death was specified. Brown distinguished himself with his coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Brown’s wife, Charlotte Rayner, added a tribute via a statement: “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. Over the course of his career, Aaron worked morning shifts, night shifts, and of course the ‘Overnight’ (a program he absolutely loved working on), but he always found a way to make both ordinary and special times with our daughter Gabby and me. These last few years, when we have all been able to live in the same city, have been the sweetest time for Aaron and me.”

As a longtime ABC News reporter, Brown was the original host of that network’s ABC World News Now program, and he went on to anchor CNN’s flagship NewsNight show that combined breaking news coverage with analysis.

Born on November 10, 1948 in Hopkins, Minnesota, Brown attended the University of Minnesota in 1966 as a political science major, before signing up for the Coast Guard Reserve. After early stints as a radio host in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, Brown built his TV journalism career in Seattle working at the city’s NBC and CBS affiliate stations for 10 years.

He moved to New York in 1991 to join ABC News as a reporter and the first anchor for the network’s overnight newscast. It was at ABC News that Brown, working amid network heavyweights like Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel, garnered national attention for his work as a reporter on programs like World News Tonight, Nightline and Good Morning America.

He would become Jennings’ primary fill-in anchor on World News and became the lead anchor for the weekend edition of the evening newscast, as well as co-anchor of GMA’s weekend edition. At ABC, Brown traveled the world reporting on foreign hot zones and conflicts, as in Bosnia, and also covered the O.J. Simpson murder trial in Los Angeles.

Brown’s hiring by CNN in June 2001 was seen as a coup for the cable channel, which was looking for a worthy successor to Bernard Shaw to kick off its primetime lineup. He had been hired to anchor the 8 p.m. hour and to lead breaking news coverage for the channel.

But it was the events of September 11, 2001 that brought him to the rooftop of the CNN building in New York City to report firsthand on the World Trade Center terror attacks. Brown received an Edward R. Murrow Award for his live coverage.

“Just look at that, that’s as frightening a scene as you will ever see,” Brown, with his back to the CNN audience, said on 9/11 as he recounted over 17 hours the World Trade Center towers exploding and falling into the Manhattan skyline around 30 blocks away, while also struggling to process the horror of the attacks elsewhere in the U.S. that day in his own mind.

“In some ways, you were like too into it, too focused to be anything other than a reporter with the biggest story anyone had ever had,” Brown later told NPR’s All Things Considered show in a 2011 interview. “I know I was exhilarated, which I know will sound strange, but it’s what I had prepared my life to do,” he added.

After leaving CNN, Brown became a journalism professor at Arizona State University.