ON THE 20th anniversary of September 11, veteran reporter Jon Snow has recalled his experience of covering the worst terrorist attack in history live on television.

In a podcast for Channel 4, the Sussex journalist said he was invited to lunch in Soho when he got a call from the news desk demanding he return to the studio.

Jon led an hour-long special news bulletin on the network, shortly before the second tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.

At the same time as Jon was in the studio covering events as they unfolded, he said there was a “frenetic” atmosphere in the newsroom with people running around.

Looking back at his coverage of the event for the first time, he said: “I’m speaking far faster than I normally do, and I clearly totally failed to keep my calm and try to simply read the news.”

Jon described feeling emotional just looking back at the footage, and said that he tried to remain focused on the pictures being received from New York.

He said: “The speed of events was such that you didn’t have time to cry, you didn’t have time to think about the humans, you didn’t have time to work out just how many people had lost loved ones.”

“Your duty is to try to inform, so your own tears, your own agony - there’s no space for them.”

The images of people jumping from the towers have stuck with him, even 20 years on from the tragedy.

He said: “It’s wondering do you lose consciousness at some point as you fall because of the sheer force of the velocity. How much suffering were they going through?”

As he watched back at the channel’s main bulletin from that evening, featuring the devastating footage of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center, he said: “It never ceases to be shocking. It’s always utterly harrowing.”

The Argus: The moment the second plane crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York: credit - Robert J. FischThe moment the second plane crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York: credit - Robert J. Fisch

Two months after the attacks, Jon was the first journalist to report from ground zero, the site of the debris and destruction of the Twin Towers.

Jon recalled: “It was as if it had happened the day before. The ground was still hot, there was still smoke and steam rising from the wreckage, but the place was so unutterably destroyed.”

The amount of devastation meant that it was hard for Jon to work out where he was in the remains of the complex.

Almost 3,000 people were killed on September 11 in the attacks on the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon in Washington and onboard United 93, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

Jon, the longest-serving presenter of Channel 4 News, is set to retire at the end of this year.

His full interview with The Fourcast podcast can be found on their website and on YouTube.

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