CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Ted Turner: The Devil Behind Cable News

Ted Turner smoking a cigar – Public Domain

Being very much the all-American figure that he was, the passing of Ted Turner was bound to enliven the cliché machine with the usual, clotty descriptions: the philanthropist, the conservationist, the yachtsman, sporting proprietor and twenty-four hour news pioneer.  “He thought big and lived large,” observed Guardian US columnist Margaret Sullivan with irritating triteness.  “He was the original,” added former CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour, barely an improvement.  “He made us all strive for his vision of a better world.”  No doubt the hagiographers will be kept busy with words of statuary on various aspects of his life in due course.

One contribution of his should not be spared a good beating.  As the man behind the first 24-hour news network, he has much explaining to do.  The time when news could be rationed to times of the day did, at least, concentrate the mind on those behind producing it.  Care would be taken assembling the items that would be delivered by an almost affected hauteur on air.  This all changed when the news about events became news about news. Turning news into a twenty-four-hour affair had the effect of treating virtually everything before the camera into something worth mentioning and reporting about.  Nothing in this world of “Chicken Noodle News” could be too trivial anymore; every item, however tedious, deserved its place in Andy Warhol’s span of 15-minute fame, from inane car chases to watching paint dry.

After Turner’s launching of the Cable News Network (CNN) in 1980, events of varied relevance and........

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