Aaron Brown, Walter Cronkite Professor of Journalism, Professor of Practice

Aaron Brown is the inaugural Walter Cronkite Professor of Journalism. Each semester he teaches a seminar on turning points in television news history, a subject in which he is well versed. From the Vietnam protests and Watergate in the 1970s to the beginning of the Iraq War, he has, quite literally, been there.

Brown is best remembered for his reporting of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center for CNN. On the air a half-hour after the first attack and broadcasting from a rooftop in lower Manhattan, Brown’s coverage has been called courageous, calming and insightful. For that coverage, he won the coveted Edward R. Murrow Award. In addition to the Murrow Award, Brown also won three Emmys, a DuPont, two New York Film Society World medals and a George Foster Peabody Award.

Before joining CNN in 2001, Brown was a founding anchor for ABC’s “World News Now,” the network’s overnight newscast, and later was the anchor of “World News Tonight Saturday” as well as a correspondent for “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.” While at ABC he covered the trial of O.J. Simpson, two California earthquakes, the Columbine shootings, the violent struggle for democracy in Haiti and the war in Bosnia.

Brown began his career at 18 hosting talk radio programs in Minneapolis, near his hometown of Hopkins, Minn. After a short stint doing radio programs in Los Angeles, he moved to Seattle where for the next 18 years he was a reporter and anchor at KING TV and KIRO TV. He left Seattle in 1991 to join ABC News.

In addition to teaching in the Cronkite School, Brown serves as anchor of “Wide Angle,” PBS’ weekly global public affairs series.