Time Warner bought CNN not to own it, but to destroy it. The second they had their hands on it, they cleared the decks of real, intelligent, critically thinking news people, and replaced them with mindless infotainment bimbos. The news network that at one time was watched by world leaders as their best source of info on what was going on in the world, is now laughed at across the planet. Ted Turner has said if he knew what they were up to he would never have sold.
Ted Turner Roars Again
20 September 2006 (StudioBriefing)
CNN founder Ted Turner said Tuesday that the news media are not working hard enough to inform viewers about international events that affect them. "That's one of the reasons I started CNN and did my best to get them to concentrate on serious international news -- so that people would be better informed," Turner said at a meeting of journalists and policy leaders in New York. "If we don't have the right information today, we're doomed."
Redstone Professes Unrequited Love for CNN
12 January 2006 (StudioBriefing)
CBS, which for years has flirted with CNN, may now be eying it as a possible marriage partner. As reported by Broadcasting & Cable magazine, Viacom/CBS Chairman Sumner Redstone told an audience in Beverly Hills Tuesday night that if anyone in the crowd was able to reach Time Warner chief Dick Parsons, "Call Dick. Tell him I want to buy CNN ... because CNN and CBS would be fantastic." Oddly, while he made no such offer to buy Fox News Channel, he was effusive in his praise for it. "They may be biased, but they are dynamic and charismatic, and the result is they are doing better than CNN," Redstone said. "They are doing great because of showmanship." When asked if he believes CNN founder Ted Turner will ever stage a comeback, Redstone replied, "When he sold to Time Warner, that was the end of Ted Turner. ... Control is the thing. I'll never give it up."
Former CNN Bureau Chief Reveals Why She Quit
20 June 2005 (StudioBriefing)
CNN's former bureau chief in Beijing and Tokyo has acknowledged that she resigned from the cable news network because she "had been growing increasingly frustrated with the direction CNN was going in." In an interview appearing in the current Columbia Journalism Review, Rebecca MacKinnon remarked that she had become aware of a trend toward "less interest in serious news and ... towards more infotainment, from anything but a war zone." She said that as "neither a war correspondent nor an infotainment news bunny," she was forced to reexamine her place at the network, especially after being told things by her superiors like, "Your expertise is getting in the way of doing the kind of stories we want to see on CNN" and "We'd like you to cover the region more like a tourist." MacKinnon said that when she came to the network in 1992, when it was still owned by Ted Turner, it placed heavy emphasis on international stories. "There was this real feeling that if a story mattered, we should cover it. If you had a strong argument to that effect and you could pitch that to Ted Turner, the funds would be there, because he viewed CNN as something other than a product that you just sell on the market for profit maximization. He saw it as something more socially significant than that." All that, she said, changed after the merger with Time Warner.
Ted Turner Blasts Fox News Channel
26 January 2005 (StudioBriefing)
The result of media consolidation has been a television industry that is less critical of the government, and, in the case of News Corp, even a propaganda agent of the government, CNN founder Ted Turner said during an address to TV programmers in Las Vegas Tuesday. Appearing as the keynote speaker at the National Association for Television Programming Executives (NATPE), Turner, who once compared News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch with Hitler, pressed on with the analogy of governments using media as a propaganda organ by referring to News Corp's Fox News Channel, which has overtaken CNN in the ratings. Not being the most popular news network, Turner remarked, is "not necessarily a bad thing, though I'm not happy about it. Adolf Hitler was more popular in Germany than people who ran against him. Just because you are bigger doesn't mean to say you are right." However, he added, "it does pose problems for our democracy. Particularly when the news is dumbed down, leaving voters without critical information on politics and world events and overloaded with fluff."
Ted Turner: "Bust Up the Conglomerates"
22 July 2004 (StudioBriefing)
Ted Turner has cited Disney's decision to reject distribution of Fahrenheit 9/11 as an ominous indication of the chilling effect of media consolidation. Writing in the Washington Monthly, the CNN founder takes special note of a statement by a Disney executive at the time: "It's not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle." Turner comments: "Follow the logic, and you can see what lies ahead: If the only media companies are major corporations, controversial and dissenting views may not be aired at all." Turner's advice: "Bust up the big [media] conglomerates."
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0877894/news"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it." - Patrick Henry
The level of injustice and wrong you endure is directly determined by how much you quietly submit to. Even to the point of extinction.
by Specop_007 » Mon 12 Sep 2005, 17:39:05 
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