‘Deseret Voices’ Episode 51 — 2 anchors, 25 years later: The morning we broke the 9/11 news

The tragedy of 9/11 unfolded before the eyes of Americans as networks broadcast the horrors of planes crashing, people jumping and the towers of the World Trade Center falling.

Former CNN anchor Carol Lin was the first national television news anchor to report on the Sept. 11 attacks.

On this episode of “Deseret Voices,” Lin talks with Jane Clayson Johnson, who was also anchoring a news desk that fateful day, about a unified nation, grieving family members, heroic first responders and haunting imagery.

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Note: Transcript edited by Steven Watkins.

Jane Clayson Johnson: Twenty-five years ago, on the morning of Sept. 11, history changed in an instant.

Long before that day, my guest, Carol Lin, and I were young network correspondents together in Los Angeles. But on 9/11, we found ourselves at anchor desks on opposite networks — Carol live on CNN and I at CBS — tasked with breaking the news to a stunned nation.

On this 25th anniversary, Carol joins me to look back on that morning — and the days that followed. Together, we reflect not just as anchors behind a desk, but as journalists carrying the emotional weight of covering tragedy, and remembering the remarkable spirit of unity and shared purpose that emerged in its aftermath.

That’s our conversation today on “Deseret Voices.”

Well, I want to start 25 years ago on 9/11 when we were both on the air that day. I was hosting the network morning program on CBS with Bryant Gumbel and you were hosting the morning show at CNN. What do you remember about that morning?

Carol Lin: I remember, Jane, it was an incredibly calm, slow news day. Our lead story was whether Michael Jordan was going to return to the NBA and the second story was the renovation of the Capitol building. So, not exactly ratings, you know, headline-grabbing newscast ahead of us. And it was so quiet, so quiet.

JCJ: Yes.

CL: Yes.

JCJ: Yes, it was a beautiful morning, wasn’t it? It was crisp, a crisp fall morning in New York. It was Tuesday, that’s what I remember, a beautiful, beautiful day and it felt very routine, as you say, and then 8:46 a.m. happened. And we were actually in a commercial break when the producer said in my ear, “We think a small plane hit the World Trade Center.” We came out of the commercial break and went straight to pictures of that north tower of the World Trade Center with black smoke billowing into the sky. And, you know, we didn’t think anything of it, really.

CL: Yeah, it was breaking news. We knew it would be a big story, but we had no idea that history was truly in the making and the world as we knew it was going to fundamentally change after that day.

JCJ: Who was your first eyewitness?

CL: Our first eyewitness was an executive in the Turner building up in New York. I was at the global headquarters in Atlanta. And it was Sean Murtagh, the VP of finance, who was holding a meeting in a conference room with a clear line of sight to the World Trade Center. They heard the roar of a jet, they looked up, and out the window they had a clear line of sight to a giant, gaping hole in the north tower of the World Trade Center. And he was our first live phone interview and the first to confirm that it was a passenger jet. Up until that point, we thought it was a small plane.

JCJ: Yeah, yeah. And I remember in our studio, producers and crew had gathered around the monitors to see what was happening at the World Trade Center. And then at 9:03, that second plane, [United] Airlines Flight 175, slammed into the second tower. And I can still hear in my mind the gasps and the screams in an otherwise quiet studio because in that moment, everyone knew that this was something much more serious than perhaps a small plane crash.

CL: Yes. I mean, the first thought that went into our minds at the CNN Center was terrorism. I mean, that for us, all but confirmed. People were shouting, they were running through the newsroom. This was something wholly different, we knew it.

JCJ: And even in that moment, we had no idea, really, the scope or the scale of what this would become, right?

CL: Right. We were just going moment to moment. I think it was certainly as you said, when the second plane struck, and then it was like, I don’t know, it was like a deck of cards unfolding. You know, it was the first plane, then the second plane, then the third plane, then the plane crashing in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. And I distinctly remember that surreal feeling of, “What is the next target?” We had no idea. It was a world — it was like a world gone mad.

JCJ: Yes, yes. It was 9:37 when that American Airlines flight crashed into the Pentagon, and then at 10:03, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into Shanksville, as you mentioned. And we had turned our CBS News coverage over to Dan Rather just a couple of minutes before 10 a.m. right before that first tower came crashing to the ground at 9:59 a.m. And I remember just seeing that. It was so surreal, so frightening. You couldn’t believe that this was actually happening.

CL: One of my vivid, most vivid memories of that day is not what was said, what I said on the air, but what I didn’t say on the air. So, you know, we have our earpiece and and we’ve got a direct communication with the control room and thus the rest of the newsroom. And I was hearing things like, you know, “We’ve got unconfirmed reports of a car bomb outside the State Department.” “We are hearing that the White House is being evacuated,” which it hadn’t been at that point. That Mayor Rudy Giuliani was sending 10,000 body bags down to what would be known as ground zero. All these things, you know, just this rolling thunder of rumor and, you know, to some degree misinformation. At that point, none of those things were true. So, I remember distinctively the withholding of information, waiting until we could get eyewitness confirmation or confirmation from the authorities that these things in fact were happening.

JCJ: And in that first week, I remember being on the air like you from 6 in the morning till noon, you know, around the clock every morning updating the latest information. It was all hands on deck from 8:46 a.m. on that Tuesday morning, around the clock, 14-, 16-hour days. I remember we set up cots in our offices and slept there because we were needed to go at a moment’s notice.

CL: Yeah.

JCJ: And, you know, that was the moment of history that I truly do feel to this day was such an honor to be part of as traumatic and tragic as it was.

CL: Mm-hmm. It’s true. You know, what is it that is said about journalism, that you are writing the first chapter of history? And the exhaustion, you know, is part of it, the memory of what it’s like to work under those conditions and find your own limits, but also your own resilience. And that people don’t realize when you’re talking about 14-, 16-, 20-hour days, you’re not sipping coffee. I mean, you are out grabbing interviews, you know, sitting through edits, going on doing live shots. You’re constantly on, like you’re living on adrenaline. And it’s not the kind of adrenaline that’s a good kind of adrenaline like, “Oh, I’m so excited to be here.” It’s the kind of adrenaline that you need just to keep going.

JCJ: Right.

CL: Yeah.

JCJ: So much was coming in so rapidly.

CL: Yeah.

JCJ: And I do remember so vividly interviewing so many people whose family members in that moment were missing or had just been confirmed dead. There was just so much grief. The suffering was just palpable. You could feel it. You could feel it everywhere on the streets of Manhattan. I had a dear friend from our show whose husband died in the north tower. Everybody knew somebody who had been affected in some way on 9/11.

CL: Yes, I remember people telling me later, strangers whom I’ve met on airplanes or, you know, at other stories in years that followed, who said, “I learned that my best friend,” or “I learned that my brother died that day by watching CNN.” And it is such an eerie feeling for a story, certainly of that magnitude, to come so close to home, to feel so personal, to have, you know, to be able to reach out and touch the very people whose lives you were, you know, you were transmitting or communicating the worst possible news that they could hear about their families on that day.

JCJ: Yes, yes. And it wasn’t just the victims. I remember still vividly those first responders who will forever be etched in my mind. I went down to ground zero to interview the director of FEMA and smoke was still coming up from those buildings, from the mangled wreckage, several stories high. And I’ll never forget the haunting look in the eyes of those brave men and women who were down there for days and weeks and months, breathing in that terrible hazardous air, the asbestos, the heavy metals, right, the carcinogens? And so many of them suffered chronic illness for years after that. Many died, of course. None of us wore masks down at ground zero. We didn’t even think about it, didn’t come to our minds.

CL: Isn’t that crazy? Well, on the one hand, you know, before 9/11, I always felt a bit of immunity from, you know, the disaster that was unfolding around me, that this was a story at arm’s length. But when you’re in the midst of it, Jane, and, you know, that I bet you vividly remember the scent.

JCJ: I remember so vividly the smell. I remember not opening my windows in my apartment for weeks because there was this persistent odor. I remember it being like a combination of jet fuel and burning plastic and metal, just the heaviness. You could feel it in the air, it just hung in the air. What else do you remember from that day, Carol?

CL: I remember those first responders, you talk about that, and I remember hearing the recordings of their voices, the radio traffic that are now available to us in the 9/11 Museum in New York City, and the resolute calm, the absolute determination that they were going to go into that building and they were going to save lives. And the lack of hesitation, just the calm and the heroism that that takes. And I often, and every year, think about this on the anniversary of the kind of courage that takes. And yes, you ask any one of those individuals who survive, they say it’s the training, but it’s so much more than that. These special individuals who were called to be on the front lines, to run towards flames, to climb those flights of stairs in the north tower to save as many people as they possibly could. And in the radio traffic that we can listen to today, those moments where these first responders realized that they were not going to make it out.

JCJ: Yes.

CL: It’s haunting and revelatory at the same time, just the the honor and the courage and the legacy that these individuals passed on through their voices.

JCJ: Yes, those first responders. I remember walking through Manhattan and, you know, at every block there’s a fire station about, and you’d walk past these mounds of flowers and cards and pictures, and little memorials to these first responders. And I remember also so vividly walking through Manhattan, every time a fire truck would pass on the street, people would stop and they would turn and they would salute or they would put their hands over their hearts until that truck passed. And I remember one mother leaning over as that fire truck was passing to tell her son, she pointed up and she said, “Those are heroes who are passing right there.” I’ll just never forget it, so many moments like that.

CL: You know, it’s interesting that in these moments of despair and tragedy and such suffering and loss, that we can also experience — I think what you’re describing is this sense of awe that we have heroes amongst us, that she can point to her son and and show the example that these individuals are setting for a better world, you know, to be present for and and to be rescuers. Heroes, they live amongst us.

JCJ: All these years later, 25 years later after 9/11, we have a whole generation that wasn’t even born.

CL: At that time, yeah.

JCJ: Yeah, and I wonder, you know, what we should have them remember about that day, and about our country coming together during that time, and what that looked like.

CL: Jane, so I hesitate because I’m reliving it as you speak. I have never had the privilege of seeing what I saw in the days and weeks after 9/11 of American flags being flung out of open windows in cities across the United States, of this love of country. You know, we’re such a big country, 300 million diverse individuals. We’re noted for our arguments, right, our divisions, our democracy and debate, but for those days and weeks after 9/11, there was this unity. Not for everyone, but for many of us, most of us, pride and love of country and empathy and compassion for one another. A pause in a coffee shop of acknowledgment to a stranger. And it was extraordinary to see that what our country is capable of and how we can and do come together.

JCJ: Yes, I often think that sometimes it does take a traumatic event to bring people together, but I wish that as a nation we could have that unity again, to feel that connection to each other and to a purpose and to our great country.

CL: You know, it shows that we have the ability, we have the capacity. It is part of our nature as Americans. We want to — we aspire and we want to believe in things that are greater than ourselves, and I think that feeling of community and unity to such a degree in those days and weeks after 9/11 just shows what we’re capable of. You’re right, it’s an aspiration, and I hope that on every anniversary, but in particular this one, the 25th anniversary, that we take that moment and we still ourselves and we listen to that memorial bell toll as the names are read of those who died that day, and we appreciate the fact that their names are read because we are reminded — not only of our loss, but lives lived, right? And the common story that we share. It can be exquisitely painful, but incredibly beautiful at the same time.

JCJ: I remember 9/11 changing a lot of things for a lot of people. People talking about how to live in the moment. Tell someone you love them, help your neighbor, reconcile with a loved one because you just don’t know if you’ll have another chance. I remember a friend at ABC taking out part of her savings to buy a little cottage that she’d always wanted because, you know, you just don’t know. Not every day is promised. Changed how people lived and how they looked at their lives.

CL: One hundred percent. I think to myself, there’s like the before and then there’s the after in my private life. For so long, we had wrestled with this idea of, “Could we start a family? Whenever is there a good time in a journalism career to be pregnant and to have a child in a job that does nothing but take you away from the people you love?” And all the loss and the devastation and the grief around us stoked a real conversation about, “Can you create life? Can you create joy? Can you create a family?” Something that was so hard to imagine before. Could we try? You know, and for me, my daughter, Chloe, has been the greatest gift. It was a life-changing experience because, Jane, I was not a natural parent, but I think the love and the concern for our fellow human kind in the midst of tragedy and disaster was something that was eye-opening, you know, on a very deeply personal level.

JCJ: Do you remember the physical impacts of 9/11? Even if you weren’t down at ground zero, just covering that story was very physically demanding.

CL: Oh, yeah. And, you know, it’s what the audience doesn’t see. So they don’t see what the behind-the-scenes in a newsroom looks like, and at the CNN Center, we had monitors of live feeds rimming the all global headquarters and certainly in the control room where raw, unfiltered video from ground zero, bodies being pulled from the wreckage. Or even our live coverage that day of people choosing to jump from the towers rather than burn to death. You know, these are unfiltered feeds that are coming in 24/7 from the scene of each plane crash. And it’s the trauma and the exposure to these images that many of my colleagues who are not on camera — the producers, the writers, the editors — were exposed to on a daily basis, and to this day, they talk about that trauma, you know, how triggering it can be, how it affected even their decision whether to stay in the business for a period of time because the human mind can only take so much. And, you know, you talk about the physical effects of a job, they hadn’t even left the global headquarters, and yet, it’s as if they were right there 24/7.

JCJ: Yeah, that was the image for me that really will always stay with me, seeing those people jumping from the World Trade Center. It was so traumatic to see that coming in live and to realize that that is happening in real time. And the trauma of that stays with you. The trauma of being in the middle of that historic moment in so many ways.

CL: Yeah. And I think for those of us who experience these traumatic stories, thinking that we are, you know, almost superhuman, Jane, that we can hold a story as big as 9/11 at arm’s length, that we can interview people who’ve suffered such tremendous loss and not expect that we can be affected as well. And I think part of it is just internalizing the trauma of other people and underestimating the fact that I’m just human, just like everybody else.

JCJ: Remember down at ground zero when those mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters were bringing pictures of their loved ones to tape up to the barricades around ground zero? People were desperate to find their loved ones. They didn’t know where they were.

CL: We had veteran CNN correspondents doing a live shot from ground zero and openly weeping during their live shot. That just doesn’t happen. It was so compelling, gripping, human, the sadness, the desperation of these parents, they can for their children, was overwhelming. And I think that, you know, for all of us, you know, journalists are often accused of being insensitive or, you know, the industry itself trying to monetize these moments, and I assure people, you know, that was at not at all the case. And, you know, you talk about the people who were choosing to jump out of the World Trade Center, and I remember watching our coverage and watching all network anchors struggle with the image. They were questioning what it is they saw because they were just like shadows falling, right? And then the horror, the discovery of what it is that we were all collectively watching is just something that we will never forget.

JCJ: No, I remember interviewing mothers and fathers and children and just feeling so much, just feeling the emptiness of their circumstance and the grief, the palpable sadness that they were feeling. And as a journalist, we’re taught to sort of hold back our feelings and to not expose what we are feeling, but in those moments, it was impossible not to. I cried with many family members at ground zero and in interviews on set where I just, I just, you could just feel for them. From the bottom of my heart, I just had such compassion and love. And I think as a people, we all felt that at that time. And that was what was so incredibly moving, I think, for many of us, to watch that in real time, to have empathy and compassion and love for each other.

CL: I like to believe, Jane, that when in that moment when you’re holding up the microphone to a grieving mother, that it’s giving her the opportunity to say her son’s name out loud, to tell an audience of millions of people what he was like, to express the grief that a mother knows when there’s this uncertainty about her child, whatever age he may be. And, you know, do you feel comfort in that, that you’re able to give these people their moment, and yes, it’s a moment of grief, but that you’re giving them voice, too?

JCJ: Yeah, you feel like you’re a conduit in the most important moment of someone’s life, for them to be able to express themselves and to share their emotion in this very traumatic time, especially on 9/11. I’ll never forget it.

CL: Yeah.

JCJ: The site of the 9/11 disaster, obviously, has been turned into a memorial. I remember hosting the one-year anniversary of 9/11 with Dan Rather at ground zero, before the memorial was built, but the footprints of the towers had been cleared and I’ll never forget watching all those families walk down into the pit, as it was called. Was such a moving experience to see people actually descending into a site that had so much trauma and grief attached to it. It’s still a very sacred place to many today.

CL: Yes, and I think the museum, the 9/11 Museum, has done a fantastic job recreating that sensation that you describe as you go down the escalators into the footprint of what was the World Trade Center. It’s almost spiritual to enter that museum. They did such a terrific job.

JCJ: And remember all those funerals, Carol? They were never ending. There were so many people who had died that we couldn’t pay tribute to them enough, you know. They were just continual remembrances of those who were lost.

CL: We forget that, you know, there were five, six funerals in a day for firefighters and police officers and private individuals. You’re right that the, you know, the services — we couldn’t keep up with the services. New York ground to a halt.

JCJ: Your recollections of 9/11 are so beautiful in your book “When News Breaks.” I wonder what you hope people take away from that experience and also from the love and the loss and the stories that you tell about the experiences of your own life?

CL: Like so many people, I remember the moment before, the minute right before. So for us on 9/11, that would have been 8:45 a.m., and we all remember that moment, and then we all remember the minute after. And I think the takeaway is that there are moments in all of our lives where news breaks and there’s going to be that moment before, but there’s going to be that moment after, and then there’s going to be the years beyond where healing and resilience will carry you through. And I think that’s important to note because the metaphor of the title of the book, “When News Breaks,” I mean, it can break us, it can make us. It’s always going to break, though. And we’re always going to find our biggest story and figure out a way to go through it. And I think that’s going to be the takeaway for me is to cherish that minute before and to have faith in that minute after.

JCJ: Beautiful. Carol Lin, thanks for being here to recall those terrible and tragic moments of 9/11 and help us remember. Thank you so much.

CL: Oh, you too, Jane. It’s so wonderful to be reconnected with you. It’s great to see you.