CNN founder Ted Turner revolutionised TV journalism

When the US attacked Iraq early in the morning on January 17th, 1991, The Irish Times night editor woke me up and demanded an analytical article. My husband Godfrey, then Levant correspondent of The Economist, and I rushed to the sitting room and switched on CNN and spent the next month writing on the war with the help of the live news channel and contacts in the region. Operation Desert Storm combined air power with a four-day offensive by ground troops to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait. This was the first time a war was broadcast live to a global audience. On June 1st, 1980, CNN, the first 24-hour news channel, had gone live and has been on the air ever since.

CNN was not only the pioneer in the field but also revolutionised global news coverage by drawing in other major broadcasters who rival CNN. The inaugural Euronews broadcast was on January 1st, 1993, from Lyon in France. The BBC began 24-hour international television broadcasting on January 26th, 1995, as a 24-hour free-to-watchers channel. Al-Jazeera English officially launched on November 15th, 2006; the Arabic channel started in 1996 and gained global recognition. Al-Jazeera Arabic began its international, 24-hour satellite broadcasting in 1999, following its initial launch on November 1st, 1996.

France 24, the French state-owned international news network, officially launched on December 6th, 2006. was meant to provide a French perspective on global events. It began by broadcasting in French and added English and Arabic and Spanish later. Today more than one billion people global access 24-hour satellite television which has become a vehicle for informing the global public rather than focusing on entertainment. Thanks to CNN and its descendants the world is better informed if not a better place.

CNN's Ted Turner, who died at 87 years of age on May 6th, began this revolution and during the 1990s CNN dominated the scene. The Guardian reported that he said, "Part of the reason America had so many problems... was because his fellow Americans were so ill-informed.” This quote was cited by former CNN journalist Lisa Napoli who wrote in “Up All Night," a book about the founding of CNN. Turner realised that “there was no better place to promote a variety of opinions than on almighty television. With a news channel, he could quite possibly help save the world," she wrote. He failed, of course.

While CNN has deserved kudos, its coverage has not been free from criticism or bias. As far as this region is concerned, CNN adopted and has retained to a certain extent Western bias in favour of Israel and most recently Donald Trump. Three-decade CNN veteran Christiane Amanpour warned that billionaire David Ellison – who with Republican allies – acquired CNN. "I’m clearly concerned," she said. “I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about what’s happening inside his company, but as a person and as a journalist with a long record, yes, I’m worried. And my concern comes from what has already happened — to CBS News, for example." She asked: “Should I list what’s going on there?

The haemorrhaging of viewers, perhaps money, the ideological re engineering of CBS, and the potential destruction of 60 Minutes." The hour-long programme broadcast investigations and interviews on controversial topics and became the most popular programme on television until it lost its vocation and shifted to agenda-based broadcasting.

Following the October 7th, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel which killed 1,200 at a music festival, CNN journalists said news broadcasts have been governed by management approval which has resulted in biased reporting of Israel's onslaught on Gaza without covering the Palestinians’ side while they have been under fire in Gaza and increased repression in the West Bank. A CNN correspondent stated. “Ultimately, CNN’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war amounts to journalistic malpractice."

The Guardian interviewed CNN staffers who said that "daily news decisions are shaped by a flow of directives from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta that have set strict guidelines on coverage." Oversight is normally directed by three departments: "news standards and practices, legal and factchecking." Turner was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 19th, 1938. Turner's father wanted him to go to Harvard, but he attended Brown University, also an Ivy League school. But his father refused to pay tuition because Turner had chosen to major in Classics.

He could not understand why his son should study Greek — especially ancient Greek which is no longer spoken. His father was suffering from depression and shot himself to death in March 1963, leaving his son to deal with a $4 million purchase which transformed Turner Outdoor Advertising – then worth $1 million – into the South’s largest billboard company. Ted Turner's purchase of an Atlanta station in 1970 launched the Turner Broadcasting System and in 1980, he founded CNN. In 1995, he sold Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner while retaining control.

The 2000 merger with America Online (AOL) was a disaster, leaving him barely a billionaire. Nevertheless, he turned to philanthropy. Due to his losses, he paid in instalments more than $1 billion he had pledged to the United Nations, completing the process in 2015. An energetic man with many interests, he founded, inter alia, the Turner Foundation, United Nations Foundation, Nuclear Threat Initiative, Captain Planet Foundation and the Turner Endangered Species Fund.

When he died, Turner was the largest landowner in North America, including 2 million acres at 19 ranches in Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico and South Dakota and Argentina. In 2002 he opened Ted’s Montana Grill restaurant and now there are more than 40 in 16 states. He was an environmentalist who rescued bison (US wild buffalo) from extinction and created a herd of 51,000.

Turner was married three times: to Julia Nye, Jane Shirley Smith and actress Jane Fonda.He had two children with Nye and three children with Smith. All five children serve on the border of the Turner Foundation.