Carol Lin

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Carol Lin

Carol Lin is a former CNN weekend anchor and fill-in reporter. She left the network December 30, 2006.

Starting her career at CNN in 1998, Lin anchored CNN Early Edition, CNN Live at Daybreak and the former news-magazine program CNN NewsStand. Before joining CNN, Lin was with ABC News. Lin was one of the few journalists brought to the network by former CNN president Rick Kaplan after he left ABC News. Earlier, Lin was a weekend news anchor for KTTV in Los Angeles.

She covered the shootings at Columbine High School, the rebuilding of Kosovo, CNN's Millennium night coverage from New York City's Times Square (and did a chat with CNN.com users) and the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

However, Lin will be most remembered as the first network anchor to break the news of the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. She broke into a commercial at 8:49 a.m. EDT, 3 minutes after the first plane hit and said:

"Yeah. This just in. You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story, obviously calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened, but clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan. That is once again, a picture of one of the towers of the World Trade Center."

While WNYW TV was the first of New York City's local stations to break into regular programming with news of the first plane attack (at 8:48 a.m. EDT), CNN was the first of the national networks to carry the news. Lin was co-anchoring with Vince Cellini.

Among other recognition, Lin was the first recipient of the National IMAGE Award by the Organization of Chinese Americans.

Somewhat infamously, Lin has been cited as an example of extreme political correctness.^{[citation needed]} During CNN's December 6, 2005 broadcast of rioting in Paris, Lin referred to two North African youths who had been killed as African-Americans. They were actually French-Tunisian, one being clearly Arab descent.

Lin earned a bachelor's degree in political science from UCLA. Lin was a dorm mate with actress Heather Locklear at UCLA, mentioned by Locklear while a guest on Larry King Live in 1999.^{[citation needed]}

Lin's husband died of cancer in 2003.