Media Maverick Ted Turner, Pioneer of Cable News, Passes Away at 87
Leaving behind a massive, albeit messy legacy
Ted Turner’s accomplishments are many, but he is perhaps best known as the flame throwing do-gooder who created cable news in the hopes that it would allow him a chance, quite literally, to save the world.
“Part of the reason America had so many problems, he believed, was because his fellow Americans were so ill-informed,” former CNN journalist Lisa Napoli wrote in “Up All Night,” a book about the creation of CNN.
“With a news channel, he could quite possibly help save the world.”
When I first heard that the founder of cable news passed, I couldn’t help but ask myself whether or not the creation of cable news itself could still be claimed as an accomplishment. After all, we spend much of our time here on PVN warning Americans about the perils of corporate media and the dangers of the never-ending news cycle. We have watched over the years as Ted’s creation has devolved from a truly inspirational attempt to inform the entire globe, into a cesspool of partisan hackery that has turned the 24-hour news cycle into a single hour of sensationalist slop repeated 24 times a day.
In the end, I settled on a simple solution to my dilemma. I decided that what we did to his creation, with our greed and our reality TV needs, that’s on us. Ted gave us something bold, something incredibly ambitious and risky, and something that was created as a tool to move America, and perhaps all of humanity forward. It was pure once, and Ted Turner gave us that.
So when everyone else in the business rushed to publish highlights and goodbyes in the hours after his death, I sat with my thoughts for a bit. Ted Turner’s death was not just the next news cycle to me; it was a time to reflect on the state of his creation and how far it has deviated from Turner’s original and aggressively noble intent.
In short, the tribute is a day late, but for all the right reasons. Now is perhaps the perfect time to jump off the informational gerbil wheel for a day and give some real thought to how we inform ourselves about the world around us, and how we can make a positive impact on that world.
It was pure once, if only for a moment, but it could be again. Ted Turner’s life, seen through this lens, is both a warning about greed and corporate power, and also an inspiration to the next media mavericks who may just be able to set things right again.
And when that happens, I want to be one of them. Just like Ted Turner.
Brett Pransky is a writer, a teacher, a father, and a husband, but rarely in that order. He spends his days amplifying the voices of freedom and democracy as an Editor right here at The Political Voices Network, and he spends his nights trying to fix the world one clever sentence at a time.
In the beginning CNN followed the practices of the big 3 news outlets, ABC, NBC and CBS, tell the truth to the best of their abilities. When Mr. Turner lost the ability to work, we lost a strong liberal voice and leader. Through the years whenever I've heard Mr. Turner's name, I would wonder and day dream, what if? Mr. Turner had an incredible influence on how information was presented, he was an honest mogul! When he began to fade away we can see the correlation between the sensationalism of cable news, ratings 1st over 1st telling us the truth. His loss was felt through the loss of objective cable news reporting. As a 20s something kid Ted Turner was someone I envied. Not a bad envy just a, man, that is the life to have! His voice has been missed, his liberal ways would have changed the world but, happy that we had him, wish we coulda got more but, incredibly happy for what Mr. Turner has accomplished, thank you for everything!!! 🖤🤗