(NewsNation) — We all remember where we were and what we were doing when tragedy struck the country on September 11, 2001. The same can be said for journalists who were on the ground covering the attacks, including NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield.
21 years ago, Banfield was covering the attacks in New York for MSNBC. Looking back on video clips of her coverage, she says she hears terror in her voice.
“Everyone calls me so brave for having been there that day. The truth is, I was absolutely terrified,” Banfield said on “NewsNation Prime.”
Despite the chaos, Banfield felt like she needed to keep covering what was happening to the U.S. She said there were many moments that have stuck with her all these years, but there’s one in particular she will never forget.
“The one moment that I really take with me is the time when I was broadcasting live, it was in the evening sometime, and it was after 9/11. So it would have been on the 12th or 13th, or maybe even 14th. A woman came up to me while I was on the air with her poster, because everybody had their posters asking ‘Have you seen my loved one? My husband, my wife, my daughter, my son, everything?’ And she said, ‘Have you seen Lindsay Herkness?’ Lindsay Herkness was my friend. Yeah, so I didn’t know it at the time. And Lindsay died. So that hit me live on the air,” Banfield said. “I just had to really kind of figure that one out, you know, and there’s no pamphlet, blueprint. There’s nothing to help you as a journalist kind of get through something like that. That one stays with me.”
In the video above, Banfield describes more of her experience reporting on 9/11 and how she remembers the tragic day each year.