CNN's Aaron Brown discusses 9/11, Iraq media coverage with candor

By Franklin Crawford

In a talk commemorating the third anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, CNN news anchor Aaron Brown took a calculated risk. He admitted to a capacity audience in Statler Auditorium last Saturday that, for the reporter in him, covering the 9/11 tragedy was an "exhilarating" experience.

CNN anchor Aaron Brown, right, met with students at a dinner at the Alice Cook House on Sept. 11 before he addressed the university at large. The dinner was hosted by the dean of the Cook House, Professor Ross Brann, pictured at left giving Brown a brief tour, and his family. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

"But people forget that people who do what I do are both reporters and citizens," Brown said. "As a citizen, a father and a New Yorker, I was, and remain, heartbroken by what happened that day."

The admission paid off. For the better part of an hour, Brown -- who never attended college -- pretty much held the undivided attention of more than 700 viewers who couldn't change the channel on him.

While Brown's talk, titled "On Being Part of History: 9/11 and the Election," didn't cover the upcoming elections, it did present a human picture of a newscaster whose image is almost iconic. For more than a billion CNN viewers worldwide, Brown was an unflappable, steady presence throughout a traumatic day, delivering 14 hours of live coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Speaking at Cornell three years later, the man whose fate is to be linked to that national tragedy was disarmingly candid and engaging on the topics he did discuss. These included, of course, his 9/11 experience (it was Brown's first day as an anchor for CNN), the impact of 9/11 on the TV news industry and public life in general, the influence of viewers on TV news programming and responses to criticisms of media coverage of the war in Iraq.

Brown conceded that the antiwar movement did not get the media attention it deserved prior to the invasion of Iraq. He said that was due, in part, to the lack of any real opposition to the war in Congress and a lack of "cohesion" or "center" to the antiwar movement itself. While that was no excuse for the shortcoming, Brown said "the Democrats rolled over" on the decision to go to war and that "it's not my job to create the [congressional] debate; if there's no debate [to report], there's no debate."

The harshest media critics, Brown said, "believe we should have known that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction." But it is unrealistic, he said, "to expect we would know what no established intelligence agency in the world knew."

Brown said the media's larger failure in covering the ramp-up to the Iraq invasion was its failure to expose the Bush administration's almost complete lack of an adequate postwar plan.

"When [U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz said, 'The reconstruction (of Iraq) will be self-sustaining,' we knew it was nonsense."

The antiwar movement and the lack of a postwar strategy stories did not "get the intensity of play they should have gotten," Brown said. "But I'm not sure the country wanted to hear it, and therein lies the real problem."

He then discussed the increasing public distrust of the media and the increasing political divide between right and left since 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The distrust feeds both sides of the political divide, and media are pandering to the partisan, he said.

"We've reached a point where news with attitude -- mud wrestling with a point of view -- is the only news people want," he said. He mentioned Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" as an example not of news but of a biased political argument. He then described the Fox News Channel -- CNN's cable rival -- as being run by "talk show hosts who do entertainment with news as a component ... they are very entertaining, and they are very good at it."

TV is a perfect democracy, he said, run by supply and demand. Viewers vote by remote, and what viewers want on TV "is exactly what they get."

"It's not just that I have choices to make; you have choices," he said.

Brown himself has been attacked by viewers on both sides of the political spectrum. He spoke with some amused derision of accusations from the left that he is "a toadie for big corporate media," and from the right that he is a "liberal commie pinko."

Following his talk, Brown fielded audience questions submitted on index cards and met individually with about three dozen audience members, mostly students. He stood for photos, signed autographs and chatted with attendees before leaving to drive back to New York.

The event capped a day where Brown visited Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and was the first distinguished guest to dine at Alice Cook House. Brown joined Ross Brann, Cook House professor and dean; Jean Reese, Cook House assistant dean; and seven Cook House students for an informal dinner at Brann's West Campus apartment.

Students who attended the talk were generally impressed with Brown's candor.

"I thought he was going to give a canned presentation, and I'm glad he didn't," said Joshua Fields, a freshman. "It was great that he could be totally honest and didn't feel like he had to mince words."