Ted Turner

As I listened today about the life of Ted Turner, I could not help thinking back on those early days of CNN. I remember them. I had just graduated from college and I was at my very first job, in a Baltimore radio station newsroom. WBAL Radio. That newsroom still had ticker-tape style, very loud, UPI and AP machines that spewed out typed new stories that came in from around the country and around the world. Bells would ring from the machines as stories came in. The more bells that rang at once then the bigger, more important the story. It was ‘rip and read’ back then. We would rip off the ticker paper and run into the studio and read it over the airwaves.

Oh yes, we made morning phone calls to the police stations to find out what happened in the city over night. We ran ‘audio tape machines’ to get sound bites to play with the stories. Nothing was digital yet. We used reel to reel. There was no internet.

So, when Ted Turner had the idea of a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week, television news station to bring us info all the time, instantaneously, it was considered really gutsy, and also foolish. I mean: How could people talk about news all.the.time?!! And, how can this one station be its own network and be available in all 50 states? No local news? It was truly groundbreaking. It went up against the traditional network news half hour programs that ran on the ‘big three’ (ABC, CBS, and NBC) at 6:30pm and 11:00pm. CNN hired lots of people to work around the clock in its home base in Atlanta, and then in satellite offices and studios around the country. Later around the world.

It was a big gamble.

Today as we remember Mr. Turner on his passing, we remember a man who took huge risks, who was a visionary, and who changed the way the news was distributed to everyone around the world. Today CNN is available in almost every country, in most homes, and hotels, in businesses small and large. Really everywhere! And, for many years it was the only 24/7 news network that was out there.

Ted Turner created CNN to report the news. It was to be unbiased. Straight news. The truth. It went on the air at a time way before people started talking about ‘fake news,’ alternative facts, and tilting the news for a hidden agenda. I can’t help but wonder how Mr. Turner felt watching the other networks come on air, competing with CNN. As he watched in his old age, he might not have expected there would be so many more news networks and pseudo-news channels showing up and seeing the on-air people became personalities and entertainers.

As a person who got a Mass Communications degree back in 1979, and then worked my first newsroom experience at the same time CNN went on air, I remember the excitement of those times. I was young. I was there when 3 Mile Island happened. I was there when Pres. Reagan got shot. I was a staff ‘news writer’ which meant I would take the facts and write it in a clear and understandable way. Concise. Readable. Factual. Always using sources. In radio I would rewrite a story every few hours to keep it fresh, to add facts as they came in, but never did I edit it to promote a side, or to prove a point. That thought never crossed my mind. In fact, I think the newsroom director would have called me out if I tried to do that.

Since Ted Turner created CNN back in 1979 so much has changed in the news business. It’s quite mind boggling. Unfortunately, now real journalists get belittled. They face legal action. The profession has been watered down by so many networks and companies that pretend to be in the news business, but they really pick and choose news and slant it for the viewer. There are so many out there now, in many different media genres, that the competition has made some of them really lose their sense of ethics and honest reporting.

I can say that I have always been a CNN viewer, throughout all the years. I have seen them get into airing the nighttime opinion and interview shows, and they now allow too many guests to lie without pushing back on them. “Equal time” has become an opportunity to spread fake news. At times it has truly been disappointing.

But, I still rely on CNN for finding out what is going on when something big happens in our country or around our world. In a crisis moment, I still turn on CNN.

Thank you Ted Turner.