NEW YORK – Fox News Senior Correspondent Eric Shawn was commuting to work on Sept. 11, 2001, which was primary day in New York City, when he saw an airplane that caught his attention. It sounded much louder than a typical flight over Manhattan.
"I thought, 'Oh, he's [flying] low," Shawn, 69, tells USA TODAY.
That plane was American Airlines Flight 11, hijacked by five terrorists. The veteran journalist initially thought the jetliner might hit 2 Penn Plaza, the office building that overlooks Madison Square Garden.
It wasn't until Shawn ran into TV crews who were outside of the Women's National Republican Club in midtown that he realized that same plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Shawn remembers Dr. Vernon Gross, a former National Transportation
Safety Board official, saying it was "probably a small plane that got lost in the sun."
Shawn ran into the Fox News assignment desk and told his colleagues that it was not a small plane. Almost immediately after, he was on the air with anchor Jon Scott when United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower.
The lives of countless Americans were changed forever after the attacks of Sept. 11, including Shawn's, in a manner that he both not only never anticipated but continues to deal with.
Eric Shawn reported from Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks
Shawn is a New York City-native who worked at WPIX-TV and the local Fox station WNYW-TV before joining Fox News nationally. He recalls downtown Manhattan in the days after the attacks with one word: "Horror."
"Those gleaming, beautiful towers," the reporter says of the former World Trade Center, noting how it was all "just reduced to rubble."
"And then there was the smell. The smell was this acrid, bitter metal taste like you're eating metal."
Shawn remembers dust covering "everything" and anytime an emergency vehicle would drive by, more of it would kick up from the ground. Initially, Shawn used a painter's mask he purchased from a local store. After a few days, journalists received professional masks.
"At the time, you know it's not healthy for you," he says of the smoke and dust. "But you don't really think about it."
Now, it's very top-of-mind for Shawn. The journalist is one of 190,000 people registered in the World Trade Center Health Program. According to its website, which is housed under the CDC, the "limited federal health care program provides high-quality, compassionate medical monitoring and treatment for WTC-related conditions to those directly affected by the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania."
Shawn first noticed symptoms in November 2001 when he began to uncontrollably cough. Initially, he suffered from what people called "World Trade Center cough." It was eventually diagnosed as acute, chronic bronchitis.
Through testing, Shawn was also diagnosed with gastroesophageal acid reflux (GERD), which resolved on its own. Doctors also told him that he has the markings of someone with asthma, even though he was never formally diagnosed with the condition prior.
Then in 2025, another diagnosis. And this one shocked both he and his coworkers.
Fox News' Eric Shawn on his cancer diagnosis
Every year on Sept. 11, Shawn broadcasts on Fox News from Ground Zero, which he'll continue in 2026 on the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. During a live segment in 2025 with "Fox and Friends," Shawn revealed that the exposure to the dust and smoke left him with skin cancer, which was found earlier that year. Furthermore, his Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) number is five times the number thought of as "normal." The number is considered an indicator for prostate cancer. Shawn is now marked "under surveillance" for the disease and has checkups every three months.
Shawn's revelation stunned his colleagues on-air, which he says he didn't intend to do. And while he says it's "strange" and "weird" to find himself a part of a story that he's reporting on, the journalist hopes a greater good can come from talking about the "growing legacy" of the attacks: those who have become ill and died in months and years after their aftermath.
"I'm very fortunate that they have it under control and I'm being watched," he reassures. "The whole reason I mentioned it is because of the 50,000-plus people who are sick, many who have died today. Right now there are people who are deathly ill from 9/11-related illnesses."
Eric Shawn reacts to release of documents regarding unsafe air quality
Shawn credits comedian Jon Stewart and other advocates who lobbied Congress to fund the WTC Health Program, which is now authorized until 2090. On Sept. 8, Stewart joined a number of elected officials to credit them for releasing over 170,000 documents related to the 9/11 attacks. The troves of documents specifically reveal government concerns about the air quality in lower Manhattan after the attacks, despite then-head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Christine Whitman assuring the public that the air was safe to breathe.
"At the time, I thought she was out of her mind," Shawn says of Whitman.
In 2016, Whitman apologized while maintaining that at the time, she was following scientific readings that she believed were accurate. However, Shawn sees things differently.
"I could not see how anyone could say the air was safe," he says, calling the masking of this information "shameful."
Shawn says that the law firm Barasch & McGarry, whose offices were just a few blocks from the World Trade Center, has already sent a notice to its clients that they are monitoring the latest developments. The firm has specialized in representing victims of the attacks and their families.
As for the journalist, with the anniversary comes reflection on the first responders, those who lost their lives and others who like him, are still living with the consequences.
"I think it will take some time, but I hope that because of this 25th anniversary, that people will sit back and reflect on what we went through back then," he says. "Not just the negative, not just the horror, but remember what we represent as a country because that was an attack on the American soul."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fox News' Eric Shawn reacts to 9/11 air quality documents after cancer diagnosis
