Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III, who founded CNN in 1980, passed away on Wednesday, May 5, 2026.
CNN was the first news station of its kind, airing content 24 hours a day, revolutionizing the media industry.
He sold the company to Time Warner in 1996 and became Vice Chair, although he expressed regret for letting go of control over the company. In 2001, he was pushed out of CNN when Time Warner merged with AOL.
Turner was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Savannah, Georgia. He was expelled from Brown University in 1959 for bringing a woman into his dormitory room which was against the rules. He then went to Atlanta to work for his father’s billboard company, Turner Advertising, and eventually transformed it into the media giant it became.
Turner was a globalist and openly sought population control.
In a 2008 interview with Charlie Rose of PBS, Turner said, “We’ve got to stop doing the suicidal things, which are hanging on to our nuclear weapons, and after that, we’ve got to stabilize the population.” When Rose questioned him on this, he flatly stated, “We’re too many people. That’s why we have global warming.”
“Too many people are using too much stuff,” he said.
Personally, Turner donated vast sums to the United Nations and other environmentalist and anti-nuclear causes.
Over time, CNN has garnered negative attention for its left-wing coverage of events, but the accusations of left-wing bias originated during Turner’s early tenure. A 1989 Associated Press report detailed a divisive shareholders meeting in which Turner was accused of giving “too much free broadcast time” to his personal political causes, including abortion.
“A resolution presented by Reed Irvine, chairman of the watchdog group Accuracy in Media, asked Turner to re-examine TBS’ policy on free time and to distribute the free time equally among liberal and conservative groups,” the report read. “The resolution was opposed by Turner, who owns more than half of the company’s common stock, and it failed.”
Nevertheless, Turner was still “questioned sharply about whether his personal political bias dictates programming on his cable television stations,” leading many critics to view Turner as attempting to control the population through particular media narratives.
We pray for the repose of his soul. Lord, have mercy!
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